[dba-Tech] (Fwd) Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Renderingin Outlook 2007

JWColby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Thu Jan 11 04:13:34 CST 2007


There has to be a safe middle ground though.  There is no reason that my
20th century emails have to look like a teletype from the 1950s.  I don't
really need pictures and stuff, but all the normal document stuff would be
just fine, font selection and pitch, bold/underline/italics, tables,
bullets.  Is that asking too much? 


John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 4:58 AM
To: dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] (Fwd) Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Renderingin
Outlook 2007

Thanks Stuart

One more reason to avoid HTML e-mail.

/gustav

>>> stuart at lexacorp.com.pg 11-01-2007 02:52 >>>
Forwarded from another list I subscribe to:

---------included stuff follows ------------ SitePoint Blogs » Microsoft
Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook
2007

    The following is republished from the Tech Times #156.

    If support for web standards in browsers is improving slowly,
    then support in email clients is moving at a glacial pace.
    Attempts to document things like CSS support in the major
    email clients have revealed a depressing state of affairs, but
    with recent desktop clients like Thunderbird now sitting on
    solid rendering engines, things have been looking up.

    All that changed when Microsoft dropped a lump of coal into
    every web developer´s stocking with the end-of-year release to
    business customers, and the upcoming consumer release, of
    Outlook 2007.

    ...

    But late last month, a thread in the SitePoint Forums caught
    my eye. Microsoft had published a pair of articles describing
    the support for HTML and CSS in Outlook 2007, and the news
    wasn´t good:

        Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses the HTML parsing
    and rendering engine from Microsoft Office Word 2007 to
    display HTML message bodies. The same HTML and cascading
    style sheets (CSS) support available in Word 2007 is
    available in Outlook 2007.

    The limitations imposed by Word 2007 are described in detail
    in the article, but here are a few highlights:

        * no support for background images (HTML or CSS)
        * no support for forms
        * no support for Flash, or other plugins
        * no support for CSS floats
        * no support for replacing bullets with images in
    unordered lists
        * no support for CSS positioning
        * no support for animated GIFs

    In short, unless your HTML emails are very, very simple,
    you´re going to run into problems with Outlook 2007, and in
    most cases the only solution to those problems will be to
    reduce the complexity of your HTML email design to accommodate
    Outlook´s limited feature set.

    With the release of Outlook 2007, Microsoft is effectively
    adding an entirely new rendering engine to the mix-one that
    designers producing HTML email will not be able to ignore.

    Not only that, but this new rendering engine isn´t any better
    than that which Outlook previously used-indeed, it´s far
    worse. With this release, Outlook drops from being one of the
    best clients for HTML email support to the level of Lotus
    Notes and Eudora, which, in the words of Campaign Monitor´s
    David Grenier, "are serial killers making our email design
    lives hell."

    Why on earth would Microsoft do such a thing? Security?
    Microsoft has been shouting from the rooftops about the new
    security model in Internet Explorer 7 that prevents the nasty
    security issues that have plagued Outlook in the past. It
    seems Microsoft doesn´t buy its own publicity, however,
    because this move sends the message that Internet Explorer´s
    security model is not to be trusted.

...

    ... you may want to consider giving your Outlook-based readers
    an easy way to switch to text-only email.

---------- included stuff ends -----------------

--
Lexacorp Ltd
http://www.lexacorp.com.pg
Information Technology Consultancy, Software Development,System Support.




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