Repost from pvIQ Blog
Starting on March 23rd Lycos began to roll out a new email client.
The new front end is powered by Zimbra, an open source collaboration
suite.
The roll-out of the new email client is happening in stages and is
still ongoing as of the 25th of March. In addition to changing the email
client changes were made to the imap servers. The old imap server
address was imap.mail.lycos.com to imap.lycos.com. People accessing mail
via imap should update the imap service to continue to receive it in
their mail client of choice.
Zimbra's new client includes a preview pane which is new addition to
the mailbox; the overall feel and look of Zimbra's mail client is not
unlike that of an Outlook Web Access client. The default reading pane is
positioned below the mailbox list view just like the default preview
pane of Outlook 2003. The following screenshots show you a before and
after:
Old Lycos email client
New Lycos email client
CSS & design Support in Lycos
The new email client appears to have limited support for CSS.
Background images defined through CSS are not supported and will not
render as an in-line style, however background colors defined as in-line
styles will work. Font manipulation and inheritance is supported via
in-line style. The overall result of the new client's rendering is not
unlike Gmail's with similar support for CSS. Because Gmail does not
support style sheets (either in the head or anywhere else in the body)
designers should instead rely on in-line styles as the lowest common
denominator when designing emails.
The addition of a preview pane is an added boon for marketers as it
gives their emails a better chance of being noticed. However, the new
email client, preview pane included, has images disabled by default so
although the message might get someone's attention it still takes a
recipient's click in order to enable images and thereby register as an
open.
Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Deliverability & Messaging
Unica | Pivotal Veracity
Last 5 posts by Len Shneyder
- Job Opening - Product Manager EMM - May 12th, 2011
- The New Mail.com Webmail Client - March 30th, 2011
- The New New Yahoo! Mail Beta - March 18th, 2011
- Mail.com Bulk Foldering 90% of Inbound Mail - February 24th, 2011
- HTTP, HTTPS, Gmail, IE – INCONCEIVABLE! - January 6th, 2011
lycos mail simply does not work
it is the crappiest crap I have ever seen
it used to work a year ago
I have to agree with the previous poster regarding Lycos emails. It's not browser friendly to Firefox or Opera. Nothing really works with the new Zimbra. I cannot even add email address into whitelist.
Lycos cannot get it right because they are arrogant morons who 1-do not listen to input and 2-do not hire EXPERIENCED designers. It must be run out of somebody's garage somewhere by high school kids – THAT is the "look and feel" of their Email product (note to lycos: it's *E* mail not "MAIL" unless you're sending physical packages you marketing idiots). Now, Jan 2011, their latest (not 'zimbra') "new" "interface" has at least 12 MAJOR design and behavior flaws, it's the worst one yet and the 4th or 5th "attempt" by lycos in the past 8 years. The root of the problem: arrogance and lack of a solid experienced software team.