New Gmail Emoji

[Diane]

Apparently, someone doesn't know the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The previous emoticons/emoji worked just fine.  Not only do I not like the new ones, but also some of my recipients are not receiving faces and such but, instead, code letters and numbers, e.g., 

​

 \uD83D\uDE08​  While I, the sender, could see the emoticon, that is what the receiver saw and what appeared in my Sent copy.  As far as I'm concerned, this feature now is useless!

[Marko Vukovic]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 5:18 AM, Diane <depf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Apparently, someone doesn't know the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The previous emoticons/emoji worked just fine.  Not only do I not like the new ones, but also some of my recipients are not receiving faces and such but, instead, code letters and numbers, e.g., 

​

 \uD83D\uDE08​  While I, the sender, could see the emoticon, that is what the receiver saw and what appeared in my Sent copy.  As far as I'm concerned, this feature now is useless!

​Actually, the previous Emoji did *not* work fine. They were not universal. The point of Emoji is to be (mostly) universal so that they display on ​a multitude of devices.

See this Wikipedia article.

​Emoji displays fine in my Sent Mail. Are you perhaps using a 3rd party mail client? ​

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Marko

[Diane]

Hi, Marko:

It's been a long time!

The previous emoji worked fine with all my e-mail recipients.  I use Gmail only and one account--send from it and receive to it.

~Diane

[Diane]

I am sending this with the dim hope it will help shed more light.  To be clear, the emoji show correctly on my composing screen and Sent copy.  When my (AOL) friend replies, that is when my emoji change to letters and numbers.  Here is another example that was in my friend's reply; the wording is all mine and was included in the reply:  Also, \uD83D\uDC47.  (Here I have a finger pointing downward for you to see further comments below in bold.)

[Peter V.]

Sounds to me like the recipient's email program is breaking the emojis. Not Gmail's fault.

[Marko Vukovic]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 2:44 AM, Diane <depf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, Marko:

​Hi Diane!​

 

It's been a long time!

​Yes it has, where have you been?​

The previous emoji worked fine with all my e-mail recipients.  I use Gmail only and one account--send from it and receive to it.

​The 'previous Emoji' were in fact not Emoji at all. That was a lab that encoded little GIF images into your email, similar to if you were to copy and paste an image in. This, like an attachment, grows the size of the email for every one inserted. Emoji, as you have discovered, are simply a set of symbols that, when read by a device/client that has Emoji built in, cause it to display the relevant Emoji image.

​Ciao​

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Marko

[Marko Vukovic]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:30 AM, Diane <depf...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am sending this with the dim hope it will help shed more light.  To be clear, the emoji show correctly on my composing screen and Sent copy.  When my (AOL) friend replies, that is when my emoji change to letters and numbers.  Here is another example that was in my friend's reply; the wording is all mine and was included in the reply:  Also, \uD83D\uDC47.  (Here I have a finger pointing downward for you to see further comments below in bold.)

​In your OP, you had said that it did _not_ display correctly in your Sent Mail. Now you say it does. This suggests that your friend's AOL Desktop is b0rked, or perhaps they have an old version with no Emoji. You can point your friend to this link for the latest version: http://discover.aol.com/software​

 

​Ciao​

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Marko

[DEP/Dodo]

I've been conducting an experiment by sending to various friends who have Yahoo, Juno, Earthlink, and more.  So far, only other Gmailers see what I have actually sent.

~D.

[Diane]

I misspoke, Marko, in part because it has been confusing.  When I compose, naturally I see the actual emoticon.  The same applies to my Sent copy.  However, when I receive a reply which include my original message, the emoticon within has changed.  Hope that clarifies.

[Marko Vukovic]

I did a few tests myself, from Gmail to a Yahoo account, Live.com account, Office365 (Outlook and Outlook Web Access) and an account accessed via IMAP using Thunderbird and Roundcubemail.

You will notice that the results are completely inconsistent across web platforms and email clients. The one thing that I did notice though is that the emoji displays perfectly on both my mobile devices, one being Android and the other iOS. This is not surprising to me. I think it will be a little while before the desktop and other web readers catch up so for now I would say stick to Emoticons instead for your non-Gmail contacts ;)

Original, from Gmail:

☺😊😀😁😂😃😄😅😆😑😕😠😬😎🙅🙆🙇🙈🙉🙊😸😹😻👻👹👺👍👎👌✊

Outlook 2013:

OWA:

Outlook.com (better than OWA and Outlook!):

Yahoo mail:

Roundcube:

Thunderbird:

Inbox (Android and iOS):

Apple Mail (iPhone 5s)

[Diane]

Thank you for the time you've spent on this, Marko.  Of course, you are correct about the inconsistent results and emoticons (see the bold) as I have also found.  

[Marko Vukovic]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 2:40 AM, Diane <depf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for the time you've spent on this, Marko.  Of course, you are correct about the inconsistent results and emoticons (see the bold) as I have also found.

​My conclusion then is that Gmail's emoticons work fine, it is the other email readers that are broken.​

Some, like Outlook 2013 and Thunderbird rely on the OS to display Emoji using a font. On Windows this is 'Segoe UI Symbol', as mentioned in the Wikipedia article I referenced previously.

MS did release an update for the Segoe UI Symbol font but it still doesn't seem to contain _all_ the Emoji. I'm guessing that will come in time. ​I would also hazard a guess that Emoji works fine on Apple computers, as they display perfectly in the iOS native Mail application, and they were first to release colour Emoji. 

Windows 8.1 has a new font 'Segoe UI Emoji'. I have not had a chance to test this. 

--

Marko

[Andy]

The other thing that could be happening, is that the "connections" between a character code, and its graphic icon, are lost when the other person replies to your messages.

If the Emoji are characters (rather than bitmap files), encoded with a particular character set, the reply might alter the character set, and then those characters map to something else, or instead display as Hex codes.

Diane's reply that quotes \uD83D\uDC47 suggests that this might be happening.

That could mean that your recipients see the correct Emoji, but they are lost when forwarded or sent back to you as a reply.

Andy

[Diane]

Thanks, Andy.  Unfortunately, my recipients (esp. AOLers) report not seeing the emoji I have sent.  Interestingly, one Earthlinker sees the rose-colored hearts I have used but reports they appear as teal-colored.  I just have to accept that that these new emoji are useless except for other Gmailers.

[Paul Slattery]

Marko,

Exactly what I needed to know and see.  Thank you.

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[Marko Vukovic]

On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 1:40 AM, Diane <depf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Andy.  Unfortunately, my recipients (esp. AOLers) report not seeing the emoji I have sent.  Interestingly, one Earthlinker sees the rose-colored hearts I have used but reports they appear as teal-colored.  I just have to accept that that these new emoji are useless except for other Gmailers.

​Emoji has nothing to do with ​Gmail, except for the fact that Gmail now supports them. If your recipient's device or email reader does not support Emoji, then they will not see it. You also have to remember that the Emoji set will be different across platforms and devices. See http://emojipedia.org/
My guess is that once the Windows 10 update is released, much more of the Emoji will work for those who take it up. I can already see many more on my 8.1 machine than on 7. 

​I'm also guessing that Google dropped the extra emoticons lab in favour of Emoji as the latter is universal, whereas the former was simply inserting GIF images into emails.​

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Marko

[Skip Montanaro]

Interesting to note that Google Groups doesn't seem to do a fabulous job with the new Emoji characters yet. This cheerful smiley in Gmail: gets turned into this barely visible smiley in Google Groups: 

I suppose I should be thankful it's not spitting out raw Unicode code points. :-)

Skip

[Marko Vukovic]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 7:31 PM, Skip Montanaro <skip.mo...@gmail.com> wrote:

I suppose I should be thankful it's not spitting out raw Unicode code points. :-)

​LOL yes indeed! You said code twice :-P​

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Marko