RSSUsers Upset at Outlook HTML Change
By Ed Oswald | Published January 31, 2007, 12:02 PM
Microsoft has made the decision to use the Word HTML rendering engines for both the reading and composing of messages within Outlook 2007, a decision that has been criticized by those who use HTML e-mail frequently.
The change means that many e-mails who may have displayed perfectly within Outlook in previous versions may look seriously jumbled in the latest incarnation. There's a simple reason for this: Word supports far less HTML standards.
Before Office 2007, the Word rendering engine was used only to compose mail, while Internet Explorer was used to view them. This opened the doors for design-rich messages, and Outlook was considered one of the best platforms.
Now, many of those HTML and CSS attributes are gone, leaving some messages a mess and looking nothing like the sender intended. Gone is support for background images, forms, plugins, animated GIFs, among others.
Redmond explains its decision as such: "A big thing we heard from customers is that they wanted the richness of the editing experience they were used to from Word integrated throughout Outlook. While Internet Explorer 7.0 is great, it was never intended to be an editing tool," it said in a Knowledge Base article.
That reasoning was not good enough for many. Mailing list software creator David Greiner was one of those to first criticize the move shortly after it was revealed that Word would be the new rendering engine.
"Imagine for a second that the new version of IE7 killed off the majority of CSS support and only allowed table based layouts," he wrote in a Web log post in mid-January. "The web design world would be up in arms! Well, that's exactly what the new version of Outlook does to email designers."
Jonathan Nicol, a graphic designer, said that Microsoft had "screwed up royally" with the change. "None of these limitations is going to make the task of designing HTML emails impossible, but they will ensure that no advances are made in this field for a good number of years."
Broadsided by the criticism, Microsoft is now attempting to perform damage control. However, in the Knowledge Base article, it stops short of promising to add back the CSS and HTML support that e-mail designers are complaining about.
"The Word team is continually examining HTML and CSS support based on customer feedback," it said.
I believe this is Microsoft's way of continuing to support its own version of HTML, rather than supporting the w3 standard. This is a huge issue for the industry because support for standards reduces time and money that would otherwise be spent porting to proprietary code. Consumers are blindsided by the marketing rhetoric that it's "easier" and "more secure". But the code generated by Word is horrible, and is only really supported by Microsoft's software (ie/outlook). The coup de grace here is that anyone not using web-based e-mail (via IE) or outlook will be out of luck.
Antitrust, anyone?
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Plain text FTW!
Die HTML Image spammers - DIE!
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I work on applications securing and removing spam from emails.
From spam and security point of view they did good move. Full html rendering can pose as tool for more options how to hide spam or to discover another way how to insert "bad" content.
We, as many more companies are actually filtering out most of the unwanted html tags from email just to protect clients.
Graphic reach email should just send it in simple JPG or pdf:) but befare PDF is getting more complex adding scripting capabilities and like last month showed it already been exploited via XSS in pdfs ... simple more features less security... choose your way for yoru need .. eliminate nod desired features... increase your security
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As an email marketing manager, I design, code, implement, analyze, and manage email campaigns every friggin day.
Before I roast Microsquish for screwing up email rendering, I'd like to see it. I haven't yet had a chance to actually use Outlook 07, but I'm sure that it will pose some new challenges for people like me.
I'm sure that this won't be an 'industry killer' or anything like that, it will just mean that we (email designers) will have to get used to yet another set of standards that we have to work around to make sure our emails are viewed properly by our readers.
With Lotus Notes still on the market, I'm not quite sure what everybody is whining about, Notes has the absolute worst rendering of messages EVER!
Now, I'm not a huge MS fan, nor am I a huge MS hater... but this just seems like a step in the wrong direction... why use a program that is meant to create rich *text* documents to render HTML? I know it technically can render HTML, but as every HTML coder knows, MS just refuses to go by industry standard.
IE doesn't even render based on standards, it has it's own set of standards that forces coders to hack fixes together to get any kind of HTML to display correctly across multiple browsers...
This decision is not surprising people, just annoying, and we will work around it!
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Let's be clear... only HTML e-mail "designers" are genuinely and legitimately annoyed by this change, because it means they have to do some work to test their designs more thoroughly.
The average user doesn't know the difference between "rendering engines". All they know is they want to make their e-mail text bold, italics, underline, and they want to insert images. If it works, they're happy. I'm pleased to say, Office 2007 works, so I assure you most will be happy.
The truly tech-savvy users use plain-text e-mails, and any that complain are doing so simply because it's Microsoft.
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I've been using Office 2007's final release since early December, and used Beta 2 and Beta 2 TR prior to that.
Initially, I was annoyed by the HTML quirks, but I have yet to see an email come through in the final that is not rendered properly.
I have not experienced any performance problem on my systems caused by Outlook 2007 or its use of Word 2007. In fact, I hardly notice any delay at all unless I have my system bogged down with other programs that happen to be taking priority.
I fail to see the problem here since I have yet to see an e-mail client *always* handle HTML messages properly in the first place... it's a horrible way of handling e-mail, since you should make a damn web page if you want HTML content.
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This is actually great news: it eliminates one more potential source of undiscovered security vulnerabilities.
HTML messages always kinda bugged me anyways...
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What about those of us whose first changes to Outlook2k3 included turning off using MS Word to edit emails... I hated the way that Outlook and Word integrated, always have, because it screws with my menus and removed certain options that I needed for work. Now, not only do I not have the menus I liked, but I'm stuck using the Frankenstein monster of Word and Office. Oh well, just another depressing change towards MS integrating all their products together. Wonder what happens for people who buy Outlook separately (if they still sell components as they did before)... do they get mini-Word built in, or would it go back to the old rendering style?
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Yes, imagine, that IT management in your organisation decided to upgrade the messaging system and deploy the Outlook 2007. But they also decided that full upgrade to Office 2007 would be too expensive, and current Office versions remain intact. In official system requirements there is no any notes about Word or other Office versions. Will Outlook 2007 really able to work with Word 2003 or XP?
http://office.microsoft..../HA101668651033.aspx#16
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No one would care how it was rendered if it actually rendered to spec, would they...?
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word tends to be a larger beast to load than ie. i might care ... i'd have to compare the two.
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Doesn't matter to anyone who works in (most) US government (especially DOD) circles: HTML and RTF formatting is barred entirely. Good thing too! ASCII rules.
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yeah i totally "agree" that the way the government does things is best for the general population.
thank god microsoft "sagely" intervened on the government's behalf otherwise it would have taken another 100 years.
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Continually examine HTML and CSS support by sticking to standards, you hacks!
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It's called progress, isn't it?
I just don't understand why Microsoft has done so many things to annoy people lately, particularly given the growing competition from Mac OS X and Linux. You'd think MS would want to make things as painless as possible.
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the problem is the grandmas and grandpas who keep getting into the focus groups.
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Vista annoys.
Office 2007 thrills.
I use XP and Office 2007... annoyances solved.
In any case, it's Microsoft, people love to whine for the sake of whining.
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