Emoticons in AquaMail

[johnm243]

I had an email conversation with a client. He replied to one of my comments with a "J" ... or at least that was how AquaMail rendered it!

I replied back with questions marks...

When I logged into Outlook, I saw that his "J" in my AquaMail was actually a wink smiley face: 

Is there any setting in AquaMail that will show emoticons correctly? This was slightly embarrassing...

Thanks very much,

John

[Kostya Vasilyev]

https://chrisjean.com/mystery-of-the-email-j-finally-solved/

That discussion is from 2009.

You can find some from 2008 and possibly earlier too if you Google for "Outlook smiley j".

[mikeone]

https://chrisjean.com/mystery-of-the-email-j-finally-solved/

That discussion is from 2009.

You can find some from 2008 and possibly earlier too if you Google for "Outlook smiley j".

The summary is:

" I might have noticed another pattern, the odd appearance of J only happened when the sender sent the message from Outlook.

The simple answer to the crazy mystery of the ‘J’s is that Microsoft uses a Wingding to render a smily in Outlook. The Wingding happyface happens to be at the same position as a J in the standard ASCII sets. So, on all clients other than Outlook, it renders as an out-of-place looking J.

Yay! Another example of Microsoft not following standards."

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Yes, Outlook tries to make this particular smiley -- "" -- and not any other ones like "" -- look better.

It does this by using a character from the Wingdings font, which is always available on Windows, and the smiley character there is in at the position normally used by capital J.

Since Android (or Linux) doesn't have Wingdings, you get some other font, where a J is a J and not a smiley.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Normal smiley:

:)

Outlook smiley:

<span style="font-family:Wingdings">J</span>