Archive for October 2006

Recently, a client who supported Web standards worked to design her newsletters to use cascading style sheets (CSS) for layouts instead of tables. Designers cheered. Readers jeered. One problem with this approach: email clients.

Outlook may dominate, but how many of us have second or third email accounts with Web-based email clients like Yahoo!, Hotmail, GMail and so on? Then you have email applications on handheld devices, and those on corporate networks using applications like LotusNotes. Some people use their Web host’s Web-based email client so they can check email from any computer, typically with one of three: SquirrelMail, Horde or NeoMail.

Then there are those who opt to use different computer-based software like Thunderbird, Mozilla, Eudora, PocoMail, The Bat! and Pegasus.

The problem

With only a handful of email clients, newsletters come across perfectly; when using the majority of email clients, newsletters are readable but not perfect; with other email clients, newsletters render a mess. To understand why this happens means understanding hypertext markup language (HTML) and CSS.

Instead of going into tech-speak, think of the DVD player. Any DVD can work in any DVD player, for the most part. True, all DVDs may not be compatible with every type of player, but let’s just say: DVD players look different and have their unique features, but they all do the same thing — play DVDs. Think of email clients as DVD players and emails as DVDs. Also, think of Web browsers as DVD players and Web sites as DVDs.

To continue the analogy, HTML is the language that enables different DVD players to play the same DVD. In a newsletter, it specifies how the design should look. The CSS tells the DVD player how to present the images, sound and titles. In a newsletter, CSS defines how the content appears in the newsletter complete with colors, fonts and layout.

The way email clients and Web browsers work is that the “DVDs” play, but not the same way. One might play email or Web site in grayscale. Another translates the text into a different language. Another doesn’t play images.

See Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 is what the newsletter is supposed to look like. Figure 2 is how it “gets read” by GMail, a Web-based email client. The images have been pixilated out of respect for the publication — as the poor readability is not the fault of the publisher.

[Click images to view larger in a new window]

The options

What can you do to have your newsletters be easily read? Keep the HTML design as simple as possible. The more bells and whistles, the more different it will appear than the original design. The first thing to do is accept that your newsletter will not look identical to every subscriber. Once you let go of the concept of a perfect layout, you’ll feel more at ease and know your newsletter’s style will vary.

When designing an HTML-based newsletter, you have three approaches to take:

1. Plain HTML: Use only HTML to style every item in the newsletter and no CSS.

2. Internal CSS: The CSS appears in the head of the newsletter’s HTML template.

3. External CSS: The CSS appears in a separate file that lives on a Web server. If the user is not connected to the Internet, the styles won’t appear.

As reported by E-Zine Tips, Lyris conducted a test and discovered that inline HTML had the best render rate at 94 percent. In the test, Lyris used three items with 36 email clients, both Web-based and computer-based. These results aren’t surprising.

Therefore, an external CSS is strongly advised against because it relies on a live Internet connection and the Web server working. You never know when readers view your emails, especially if they save old issues. If you delete the external CSS from the server and they try to read an old newsletter, it’s going to get messy.

Internal CSS don’t have the Web server problem. However, many email clients don’t correctly translate CSS based on W3C recommendations. And there’s the problem of when users update their software-based email clients, since updating software in companies isn’t usually an easy and smooth process.

The compromise

How do you ensure your newsletter comes across well? The ideal way is to offer HTML and text versions of your newsletter. Also, having online newsletter archives works great. When you have archives, potential readers can check out your newsletter to see if they want to subscribe.

Another work around is to include a text line at the VERY TOP of the newsletter that says, “Having trouble reading this? Read it online” and include the link to the online version of the newsletter.

If offering a choice of HTML and text isn’t possible, a simple newsletter created with clean HTML should work fine. Again, the newsletter may not look identical to all your readers, but the important thing is that the content is there and readable.

Have you received a request from a newsletter or a blogger asking for your vote in a favorite, best, or some other contest? How about a request to “Forward This” newsletter in the subject line or at the top of the newsletter before you get to the goods?

Does it bother you? Or am I reading too much into this sort of thing? On one hand, readers may not know about a contest unless the blogger or publisher notifies them. But then should they say, “So ‘n so Web site is asking for votes on best of such ‘n such. You might want to vote for your favorites” rather than outright ask for your vote?

Isn’t asking for your vote implying the newsletter publisher or blogger thinks a little too much of themselves? Then again, politicians running for elected positions ask for people’s votes and that’s considered normal for the process.

One business said it felt pressured to give an award to a Web site because of the power its owner wielded. To turn it down would mean losing that person as a contact. Not all awards have political challenges, but some do. Some companies behind the awards nominate their best vendors or advertisers.

Then those “Please Forwards” in subject lines or at the start of a newsletter give me the impression they’re more interested in the number of subscribers than providing subscribers with valuable information. I believe “Forward this” is an important and acceptable element to have in a newsletter, but in the Subject line?

Or am I going overboard here?

We have Block Spal White Pearl china for everyday use. The set comes with two different kinds of bowls: coupe cereal and rimmed soup. At first, I hated the cereal bowls that came with the set because they’re hard to fit in the dishwasher. But over time, we liked its benefits as it prevents spilling and they’re great for a lot of things that our other bowls aren’t.

Unfortunately, we’ve lost a few over the years (had them for 17 years) and only have two left. Both are chipped. In searching for replacements (yes, at Replacements Ltd., too), I came across this entry. I don’t think I want this!

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Click image to view larger]

Then this one has the opposite problem. We get a daily report of our youngest kid’s day at preschool. The report includes what and how much he ate for lunch, length of nap, and potty habits. But according to this report, they’re working on helping our kids move bowls. I guess that helps their coordination.

While earning my degree in education, I learned about the Fog Index, Flesch-Kincade, and other ways to measure comprehensibility. This helped us understand how to measure content to determine its reading level.

Along the same lines, Denny Hatch [Link from Cincom Expert Access] introduces colleague Bob Scott. Scott uses Robert Gunning’s Fog formula to make writing clearer and more comprehensible. He explains how to use the formula, which is based on two qualities that Gunning believed important in determining readability:

* Average number of words in a sentence.

* Percentage of “hard” words.

Microsoft Word comes with a feature that calculates readability scores based on Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. To use it, click “Tools,” “Spelling & Grammar” and ensure there’s a check in the checkbox next to “Show Readbility Statistics.” Run the spellchecker and after it goes through your document, a pop up box appears with the Counts, Averages, and Readability.

I admit I don’t think about this when I write articles. But I would use Word’s tool more often if we could get the readability scores without running the spellchecker. I’d love to have the tool sit on the toolbar next to the word count.

For non-Word documents, Flesh is a freeware Java-based application that calculates Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Juicy Studio has an online tool to check a Web site’s readability.

This entry’s Flesch Reading Ease: 50 (easily understood by 6th and 7th graders)

This entry’s Flesch-Kincade Grade Level: 9.8 (probably doesn’t help that I need to use words like “comprehensibility” and “readability.”

University of Texas has a nice table adapted from Flesch’s The Art of Readable Writing. showing what the scores mean.

I was unsubscribing to emails and notifications from an email account I no longer use. One of the web sites used “Cancel” to mean unsubscribe. This could confuse the visitor because it could be mistaken for cancel the whole process and leave things as it is. “Unsubscribe” or “Remove” do the job.

Another newsletter that I never subscribed to (the owner subscribed me when he contacted me) provides an unsubscribe link, but it isn’t easy to find. The link doesn’t appear within the newsletter, I found it on the web version of the newsletter. However, clicking on it does nothing. I verified my browser wasn’t blocking a script and it continued not to work.

It may be obvious as to why some publishers make it difficult to unsubscribe, but they end up losing not the readers. Readers who can’t find a way to unsubscribe to a newsletter will just delete it every time or set up a filter to go straight to the junk folder. The more newsletters a publisher sends, the higher the cost and the longer the process. Therefore, sending it to folks who trash it hurts the publisher’s wallet, server space, or both.

The Chinglish Files defines Chinglish: “The humorous version of English that appears (often in instructions for assembling or using products) after a translation from the original Chinese (or any other language) fails to come across in ‘normal’ English.” You’ve probably seen these poorly written instructions in forwarded emails or in books from folks like Richard Lederer.

A friend who originally hails from China sent the following:

If you can read Chinese, here’s a story from BBC web site (The story is in Chinese, but it translates the signs in English so you can see how they turn out.). It’s nice to know that the Chinese dish Kung Pao Chicken is translated into “Government Abuse Chicken.”

Poor chicken!

Another favorite is: “To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery are Very Crafty.” The correct translation should have been, “The road is slippery when wet.” If you are looking for the safe, you won’t find it.

Read signs in Beijing at your own risk…if you are planning to go to the Olympics in 2008.

My parents will be in Beijing this weekend, but alas, they can’t translate signs.

Last night, I was shopping on the jcp.com site because I saw a few items on sale in the store’s ad that came with the Sunday paper. According to the ad, the sale applied to the online store. JCPenney marked ALL blankets at 40-50% off. In looking for the blankets, I noticed they were not marked down, so I went to “Today’s Store Ad,” turned to the last page where the blanket ad appeared, and clicked on it to buy it online.

As I weaved my way to the blankets from the ad, the prices were correctly marked down. But when I added them to my basket, the price shown was the regular price. Furthermore, when I returned to add another blanket of another color, the regular price appeared again.

I spent too much time trying to make it work. Finally, I stopped and emailed customer service. Got an immediate reply (auto-responder) saying the company will reply within 24 hours. Autoresponders for orders work well because it confirms your order went through the system (unlike on another site where I thought I submitted an order and received nothing… no receipt, no confirmation — turns out there was no order in the system).

The next morning, I already had a reply waiting for me (directly copied… so the “suppose” is the writer’s error):

If your prices are not coming out with the sale prices, please put in the special order instruction box what the prices are suppose to be. Once we receive your order the prices will be correct or you will be contacted with the problem. We do apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

One problem — the instruction box was only two short lines (like a gift card, which it wasn’t), but I managed to explain it with as few words as possible.

I had been looking for blankets for a long time and this was a good deal. Otherwise, I would’ve just moved on, so the company got lucky with this order. Business to business companies have a greater challenge since their purchases aren’t typically small nor cheap. Some may not have a check out process — but regardless, verify the usability of the checkout process and make sure the specials also work.

We had a hotter and drier than normal summer in Texas this year. Believe it or not, it’s starting to get cool. On Wednesday, October 18, it dropped to a chilly 56 degrees Fahrenheit. But according to National Weather Service, it was a blazing 111 degrees. The screen shots prove it. I guess the hotter season spooked the radar into spouting high numbers. Thanks to my observant friend, Fran, for the pointer.

Click image to view larger image of incorrect weather

Click image to view larger image of correct weather

On another topic (hardly worth a separate entry for this comic), we hard ever see those “No shirt, no shoes, no service” signs anymore. I guess we humans have evolved enough to know better to enter a restaurant without a shirt or shoes on. But if we start falling apart, this should whip us back into shape.

I manage three web sites for three different PTA groups. All use a calendar tool and while building the latest web site, I found Trumba. It was easier to use and had more powerful features than WebCalendar.

So I started a new account for the other two PTA web sites and finally entered most of the events. Then I get an email saying that Trumba won’t have a free basic calendar service anymore. I have 90 days to find something else and enter the events before I lose the account. This isn’t an expense that’s worth paying for, but using free applications is a risk for this very reason — they can eventually stop being free.

Started researching other web-based calendars that I can integrate into the web site (a big plus with Trumba). Trumba also allowed users to select events and download them to use on their PDAs, Outlook calendars, or whatever. Found Web 2.0 List, which has a calendar category. Here’s also a list of apps from Yahoo!’s directory.

Google Calendar can be imported into a web site. So that’s one possibility. Heard about 30Boxes, HipCal, Kiko, Hula, LoCalender and CalendarHub. I think I’m leaning toward HipCal. What are your experiences with web-based calendars?

Since letter writing is becoming a rarity thanks to email, computers, and instant messaging, cursive writing also suffers from lack of use. The Dallas Morning News (here are the readers’ letters to the editor regarding the topic) reports that cursive writing practice has lost its importance. Students still learn cursive in third grade and are required to follow the rules for writing each letter correctly, but they’re not spending as much time in perfecting the writing as in the past — just enough to know it.

I’m all for that, but I still believe kids must learn how to write in cursive because they do plenty of homework by hand on notebook paper (that thing with three holes and lines). Kids can’t rely on calculators when doing math, so they have to show the steps by hand. They also do plenty of worksheets that still get distributed on paper.

My daughter’s handwriting is like Paul‘s… hard to read. It concerns me because if her teachers can’t read it, then how can she expect her work to get graded? I don’t expect my kids’ handwriting to be fancy and beautiful, but at least legible.

I have a box full of letters that Paul and I wrote to each other during the time we were engaged and separated by the miles (him in Washington, D.C. and me in Texas). Since we were geeks and emailed each other before the Internet expanded beyond the Department of Defense, we have a few printed letters. The handwritten letters stir more feelings than the printed one.

I’ve been keeping a journal since 1989 and write in cursive. My handwriting isn’t pretty, but at least my handwriting is recording my life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before my hand cramps. Also, every year when I send a thank you gift to my clients, I write a note to include with the gift.

Every year around their birthdays, I write a letter to my kids reflecting on their past year. At first, I did it by hand, but then I got so busy after having the third kid — I had to resort to the computer otherwise there would be no letter. However, I get other opportunities to write letters to them — like when they go to overnight camp. Got to make an effort to return to writing letters by hand.

Thank you notes — should always be done by hand and my daughter will be writing a lot of them come February. It’s going to be fun reminding her to do the notes.