Microsoft - The good, the bad and the ugly
Sunday, July 12th, 2009Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo.
I spend most of my daily working hours as a front-end developer creating custom HTML, CSS, JavaScript for the web. However, from time to time I have to dip my toes into HTML emails. Which is not such a stretch as after all they use the same underlying technologies. Making them even more comparable is the pain I have to go through bending, cheating and hacking the code to fit with a Microsoft product:
Internet Explorer 6 is to web development as Outlook 2007 is to HTML email development - A massive time waster!
As outlined back in January 2007 by the Campaign Monitor guys Microsoft Outlook 2007 uses the Word rendering engine to display emails, that means:
- No background images
- Poor background colour support
- No support for float or position
- Shocking box model support
The Good
Internet Explorer 8 has a high level of CSS 2.1 support, which is a fantastic move in the right direction.
The Bad
Internet Explorer 6 and its additional development time to support it will be with us for a long time to come and Internet Explorer 8 does not support any CSS3.
The Ugly
Just when you though Microsoft was listening to standards bodies and creating a better Internet environment for all they mention that Outlook 2010 will also still use the Word rendering engine.
Hopefully, the Email Standards Project’s latest website http://fixoutlook.org/ will implore Microsoft to do the right thing and stop using Microsoft Word to render emails. Please, please, please. If I say it three times does it become true? I hope so.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Outlook, Email Standards, fixoutlook.org
