The fixoutlook.org project been quite the adventure since we launched it 10 weeks or so back. The aim of the site was to confront Microsoft about their lack of web standards support in Outlook and encourage them to reconsider their approach in Office 2010. It was a lofty goal to be sure, and many wrote our efforts off saying it would fall on deaf ears.
I think it’s safe to say the success of the project surpassed even our best expectations. In the interest of posterity and to relive everything one last time, here’s a quick timeline of the ups and downs of the campaign since it launched in June.
June 24: 20,000 tweets in 24 hours
Site is launched late Sydney time and we watch anxiously as the tweets start to spread across Twitter. We pass more then 20,000 mentions on Twitter in less than 24 hours and (guiltily) knock Iran off as the hottest trending topic.
June 25: Microsoft respond
June 25: Microsoft provide a rather disappointing response to the campaign, claiming that Word does a great job of rendering HTML and there are no such things as standards for email (they’re called web standards). They receive hundreds of unhappy comments in a few hours and quickly disable them. We post a follow up to their response.
June 26: Coverage all over the web
We pass 24,000 mentions on Twitter and the campaign gets coverage across the web including CNN, Reuters, CNET and TechCrunch.
July 14: The Fix Outlook Mosaic
We create a huge mosaic poster of everyone who supported the campaign and send it to the Vice President of Office at Microsoft.
August 11: Microsoft asks, customers answer
Two Microsoft team members launch makeofficebetter.com and fixing the HTML rendering in Outlook shoots to the #1 request, where it has stayed to this day.
August 21: The Fix Outlook Mosaic on the wall at Redmond
Microsoft send a personal note to us from the VP of Office thanking us for the feedback and show photos of the mosaic on the wall at Redmond. They explain the feedback has been taken on board and that they want to continue working with us to improve this part of Outlook.
August 22: We’re nominated for the Best of the Web Awards
In a final compliment to round out the project, we were lucky to be nominated as one of the best sites of the year for .net magazine’s Best of the Web Awards. We’re in the Infamy category (actually Outlook is in the Infamy category), so please jump in and add your vote if you haven’t already. Winning that award will only help to promote the campaign to a new audience.
