New Outlook Won't Use IE To Render HTML

loconet writes to tell us about a little surprise coming in Outlook 2007: it will render HTML email using the MS Word engine, dropping the use of IE for this purpose. This represents a body-check to the movement towards Web standards. Whatever you think about HTML email, lots of it gets generated, and those generating it won't be able to use CSS any more, and may stop pushing for more widespread standards support. The announcement was made on MSDN. From the Campaign Monitor post: "Imagine for a second that the new version of IE7 killed off the majority of CSS support and only allowed table based layouts. The web design world would be up in arms! Well, that's exactly what the new version of Outlook does to email designers."

Comments

Re:Good Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is another step forward in Microsoft recognizing CSS as a threat to the Web and the World as a whole. We can't have average users' safety compromised by evil background colors or malicious absolute positioning. Good Thing (tm) I say, and good riddance!

Re:email designers?

[Angst Badger]

But why should the job title "e-mail designer" even exist?

Because it sounds better than "spammer".

Re:Fortunately, Word is also bad at rendering Word

[stoneguy]

If anyone has a tutorial on how to edit numbered lists and bullet lists in a long document without changes in one list causing dozens of incomprehensible changes to other totally unrelated lists throughout the document, please let me know... There is an explanation. It has to do with Styles. You see, Microsoft wants you to use Styles, instead of doing inline layout. In fact, they want you to use Styles so much that when you lay out some text, they generate a Style on-the-fly that describes your layout. When you use the same layout next time, Word decides "Oh, this is a Style I already know about", and attaches it to your text.

The kicker comes when you modify one of the instances. Word takes that to mean that you're modifying not just that instance, but the definition of the Style. So every other instance changes too.

The solution is to explicitly create a Style for each layout you want to use, and invoke it explicitly. Microsoft REALLY wants you to use Styles. After all, it's more efficient to format with Styles. And that makes it a best practice. And everyone knows Microsoft is all about best practices.