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:It's about storage space.

[Gryffin]

I loathe these "web-page" emails. I'm trying to think of a single one of them that's ever been of use to me or gave me pleasure.

If you want me to see a web page, please send me a URL in the email. Give me the choice.

Please.

You've obviously never worked in marketing.

Marketing is all about that first impression. The marketer wants to impress the message on you the moment you view the email in your Preview Pane. User choice has nothing to do with it. Heck, the marketer doesn't want you to have a choice to view the message or not, because you might choose not to.

I know this is Slashdot, where alpha *nix geeks prefer editing text files to using a GUI, and design and typography are considered just useless fluff. But in the Real World, appearances do matter. If your message is pleasant to the eye, it's more likely to be read. Even better if it grabs attention, compelling the user to look. ASCII text doesn't have that sort of impact; HTML can, if done right.