Microsoft takes email design back 5 years

Published January 12, 2007 by David Greiner

As I type this post I still can't believe it. I'm literally stunned. If you haven't already heard, I'm talking about the recent news that Outlook 2007, released next month, will stop using Internet Explorer to render HTML emails and instead use the crippled Microsoft Word rendering engine.

Now c'mon, how bad can this be?

First things first, you need to realize that Outlook enjoys a 75-80% share of the corporate email market, which is similar to Internet Explorer's share of the browser market - they make the rules. We've been doing some early testing, as have a few other brave souls, and come February, here's just a taste of what won't be supported:

  1. No background images - Background images in divs and table cells are gone, meaning Mark's image replacement technique is out the window.
  2. Poor background color support - Give a div or table cell a background color, add some text to it and the background color displays fine. Nest another table or div inside though and the background color vanishes.
  3. No support for float or position - Completely breaking any CSS based layouts right from the word go. Tables only.
  4. Shocking box model support - Very poor support for padding and margin, and you thought IE5 was bad!

Microsoft have released a full run down of what is and isn't supported, including a downloadable validator that helps you validate your HTML for their engine. Word of warning though, it only works with Microsoft software and Dreamweaver.

To give you a quick example of just how far backwards we've gone, here's a screenshot of the Campaign Monitor newsletter (which uses CSS for layout) in Outlook 2000 and 2007. Yes folks, that's seven long years difference.

The Campaign Monitor newsletter in Outlook 2000

Outlook 2000

 The Campaign Monitor newsletter in Outlook 2007

Outlook 2007

This really is a game changer. Previously you could send a HTML email in the comfort that the majority of your recipients would have very good CSS support. Other email clients were also catching up. Thunderbird uses the Firefox rendering engine, the new Yahoo! Mail beta has great CSS support. Things were looking good for us CSS based email designers.

Unfortunately, that all goes down the toilet now. If your email breaks in Notes or Eudora, it was often an acceptable casualty, but if it breaks in Outlook, you're more than likely ostracizing too many recipients to justify your design approach. This certainly doesn't spell the end for HTML email, it just takes us back 5 years where tables and nasty inline CSS was the norm.

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.

What's the reasoning behind this?

After picking up the contents of my desk off the floor and taking a few deep breaths, I tried to come up with a few decent reasons why Microsoft would go in this direction. Here's what I came up with.

  1. Security - But wait! Microsoft have touted Internet Explorer as "a major step forward in security". Surely they'd just replace the IE6 rendering engine with IE7 and be done with it. I'd also love to know how float and position impacts the security of an email in any way.
  2. Consistent rendering - By default Outlook uses the Word engine to create HTML emails, which it's done for years now. Perhaps Microsoft figured that in order to keep the look and feel of emails consistent between Outlook users they'd display emails using the same engine that created them. But what about the millions of other email newsletters out there that aren't created with Outlook or Word? If an email is created with Outlook, then surely it should display perfectly in a modern browser like IE7.
  3. They hate us - OK, this one might be pushing it, but I'm running out of explanations here. Don't get me wrong, we're not Microsoft bashers here. Both our products are developed on Microsoft's .NET platform and we've been a fan of their development environment for the better part of a decade. But seriously, they've taken 5 important years off the email design community in one fell swoop.

At least they've still got Hotmail, right?

Well, no. We've been doing plenty of testing with the new version of Hotmail (Windows Live Mail) for an upcoming article and it turns out that like Outlook 2007, Live Mail is actually a step backwards for us email designers. At least Hotmail ignored all CSS (except for inline CSS) and you could force it to roll back to a nicely formatted rich text email.

Instead, Windows Live Mail displays some CSS but, you guessed it, limited support for floats and no positioning. It's looking like table based layouts all round at Microsoft for the next few years at least.

Where to from here?

We've been spending the better part of the last 2 years encouraging designers to embrace accessible and standards compliant email design, but frustratingly that position may no longer hold much weight. Just yesterday, Jonathan Nicol said:

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. Remember, it's been four years since the last version of Outlook was released, so I‚'m going to guess it'll be at least six years before Outlook 2007 drops off the edge of the map.

Sadly, I couldn't agree more. While this is certainly a big blow, the reality is that many of us are going to have to scale back our email templates to years past and stick with tables and inline CSS if we want consistent looking emails in Outlook and Windows Live Mail. For a quick example, our sample email templates use a table based layout combined with some simple CSS.

Template changes aside, I don't see why we have to take it lying down. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this news. Perhaps if we get together as a community and explain to Microsoft how damaging this change really is, we can encourage some real change, or at the very least get the discussion started.

What say you, email designers?

Update 1: Welcome Digg users. With the anti-HTML email comments rolling in, I just want to clarify one thing here. This has nothing to do with the text/HTML email debate and won't stop people sending HTML email. All it means is that a lot of HTML emails in Outlook will be garbled and difficult to read. Nothing more, nothing less. Thanks also to those posting constructive comments. It seems this situation might have plenty to do with Microsoft having to separate the browser from the OS for anti-trust reasons.

Update 2: We've just posted a follow up article that explains Microsoft's reasoning behind this change and exactly what we can do about it if we want it changed.

Update 3: The time for complaining about this change or debating HTML vs plain text has passed. Read why we need to look forward and start doing our own part to improve standards support in HTML email.

516 Comments

Posted in:

  1. Chris Harrison
    January 12, 2007 4:08pm

    You’re not the only one ticked by this decision. I’m still in disbelief over this decision. Something definitely needs to be done. We can’t sit idly by while Microsoft screws this up! I wrote something brief on my site that addresses more about how I feel… (http://cdharrison.com/index.php/2007/01/10/open-letter-to-microsoft/)

    We need to let the Office Team know how we feel!!!!

  2. Waxibo
    January 12, 2007 4:40pm

    What a moronic decision. it’s up there with finding WMD in Iraq.
    Everyone knows it’s total BS but we’re powerless to do anything.
    Spitefulness or laziness? Maybe both.

  3. Andrew Swinn
    January 12, 2007 6:11pm

    My first thought was that Microsoft were putting another crazy idea out there to annoy us all. But after a second I kind of thought this might be good as I dislike HTML emails. If the client that has the majority share disables the ability to have multimedia presentations filling up my inbox, then I think this has some good points. I know it is possible for people to create really nice looking pages with very little size overhead, but alas most people abuse it and create overweight messages.

    However on the other side of the coin, I dislike most Microsoft products and this decision is rising to prominence one of the worst features of any Microsoft product ever made!

  4. Dave Greiner
    January 12, 2007 9:06pm

    I kind of thought this might be good as I dislike HTML emails

    Andrew, just to clarify, this doesn’t do anything to stop HTML emails, it simply means many of the emails you receive will be mangled and difficult to read. This will only add to your frustration.

  5. Craig Killick
    January 12, 2007 9:06pm

    You would have thought that as these technologies and marketing techniques come of age, so would the technology.

    Unfortunately Microsoft are big enough (for now) to do what they want. Whilst the other big boys, Google and Apple, innovate and keep pushing forward, Microsoft are living on old glories.

    The sad thing is it will push people away. Especially the more tech savvie, who in turn sell the products for companies like Microsoft through word-of-mouth and, with blogs and social media outlets so much more in use, that word will spread that much quicker.

  6. Steve Tucker
    January 12, 2007 9:29pm

    “Bad” doesn’t describe this. “Incomprehensible” isnt even quite there.

    Though somehow Microsoft’s decisions always make me laugh…

  7. Kimberley Grey
    January 12, 2007 9:41pm

    Oh, for crying out loud! I’m not even an email designer and this has got me bashing my head against my desk!

    Come on Microsoft, stop being such a pain in the neck.

  8. edu
    January 12, 2007 9:43pm

    Why you don’t just move to Thunderbird & Firefox?
    We are enjoying tabbed browsing, real web 2.0, inteligent spam filters, and a large etcetera since years.

    Please, show your disappointment to Microsoft by moving out from their crappy software :)

  9. Patrick S
    January 12, 2007 10:02pm

    Hey there… I guess this is attrubuted to Vista’s. IE has been split from the windows shell thus meaning that if IE is not installed on the computer Internet Explorer cannot render the HTML. See when you are in XP if you type in a url in Explorer it will go to the page “inplace” however if you open up Vista and try to put in the URL windows will open up your default browser to open the page. :)

    Regards,
    Patrick S

  10. Ian
    January 12, 2007 10:57pm

    Well, that’s ruined my day (and probably year). I’ve spent a long time encouraging clients to embrace email as a valuable brand building channel. Now it seems all I can offer them is a very plain, basic design. I expect performance across the board to drop off badly. We need someone to either come up with a great set of hacks, or for MS to realize the error of their ways and patch it up.

  11. Luc Pestille
    January 12, 2007 11:08pm

    Absolutely incredulous decision by MS - what next, the blink tag being validated as strict by the W3C? It’s taken years to get to the stage where I can template something in a very short amount of time because I know what will and won’t work, but soon I’ll have to go back to the stone ages. It’s ridiculous, and I hope OE2007 dies as soon as it can, or everyone switches to ThunderBird.

  12. Johnny
    January 12, 2007 11:13pm

    David,

    When you tried to come with reasons about why Microsoft goes this way I think you forgot to mention “Reason 4: to kill their competition”.

    Microsoft knows they can’t compete in CSS and standards so they, knowing most of the cake is theirs, step back to their solution.

    Mind you, they might plan to come with a service like “Microsoft Newsletters Service” where they will offer their “way” of doing things which are the way that Outlook will support best.

    Just my thought.

  13. Bob Mc Adoo
    January 12, 2007 11:15pm

    Patrick - I don’t think the core of the problem is Vista. Sure, XP “browser in the shell” was a quick solution to the fact that outlook and word share the same libraries and you use Ms Word to compose and edit email messages. The real problem is the html rendering engine of MS Word.

  14. Ed
    January 12, 2007 11:55pm

    What the hell is Microsoft playing at?!? This is crazy… they bang on about IE7 being more standards-compliant than ever.... and then they decide to use the Word rendering engine for Outlook?!?!

    I can’t believe that Microsoft want to make all our lives hell

  15. Marcus Taylor
    January 13, 2007 12:05am

    WTF! We may as well all resort back to plain text again… who made that decision?

    I guess a company that decides that nine options to switch off a computer is good idea, thinks that ditching CSS standards is a good idea too. The beast is getting old and doddery and is becoming incontinent.

    How many geeks does it take to switch of a compter?

  16. Hadge
    January 13, 2007 1:17am

    Its like all of Baldrick’s cunning plans rolled into one :|
    .eshot {position:in the toilet; float:"like lead”;}

  17. Tee
    January 13, 2007 1:32am

    Screw ‘em.

    I’ll continue to design to standards, and I’ll explain to any clients that the problem lies with their choice of software. I’ve already got 95% of my client base on Firefox / Thunderbird anyway.

    Incidentally - there’s no reason why MS can’t tie the MSHTML engine into Outlook, the same way that Mozilla have linked Gecko to Thunderbird (for example, you don’t need Firefox installed to run Thunderbird). They are just lazy.

    I really think this will badly affect their dominance in regards to browser / email software.

  18. Chris
    January 13, 2007 1:44am

    I’m sure that security considerations are the main reason. I think the Office-team is relatively independent from the IE-team and that they don’t want IEs security problems any longer.
    Apart from this whole Outlook issue writing HTML for mails is—depending on the target-audience—always a pain in the ass. Just think of thousands of web-mailers, historic software installations in corporate environments and so on…

  19. Jake Rutter
    January 13, 2007 3:08am

    Where is the official release for this? This is crazy!

  20. Alan
    January 13, 2007 3:19am

    Why? My guess is someone saw a security issue or future opportunity and needed to stop either IE7 or Vista(?) being hurt and so made this mad, sad move.

    They have done wonders (by their previous standards) with IE7 from IE6 but sadly it’s seems the weird, fragmented approach they portray sometimes has repeated, but this time with bigger ramifications.

  21. J T
    January 13, 2007 3:21am

    Okay, my boss (we are all email designers) is flying off the handle on this one. He’s comparing this one to Netscape 4....even worse! We had changed the way we did things here, including implementing more CSS, divs, etc. That’s out the window now.

    Someone should start a petition, requesting the reconstruct of such a barbaric idea. What ever happened to moving forward with technology??

  22. G@Leh
    January 13, 2007 3:48am

    Stunned, I have despised MS for years, and am weaning myself off of Office.  I realize the hard and fast behind this tho, our customers that we are trying to reach out to are still using this garbage.

  23. handsome rob
    January 13, 2007 4:00am

    I’m surprised they’re not using Safari to render the emails, since they rip off and botch everything else Apple does.

  24. CP _ Denver
    January 13, 2007 4:02am

    Whatever. No biggie. The world should be using Google products anyways. Go Gmail!

  25. David Ross
    January 13, 2007 4:27am

    Is there anything we can do to stop this from happening? Can we write or complain or do something, anything to reverse their decision? This is ridiculous but I’m not shocked. I FUCKING hate microsoft. Sorry for curse but I absolutely hate them.

  26. Peter
    January 13, 2007 4:38am

    Be happy you dont use Lotus Notes. Their rendering is more then 5 years back

  27. Anna
    January 13, 2007 4:38am

    This truely makes me want to cry. What the fuck!

    What can we do?

  28. Bubby
    January 13, 2007 4:39am

    So let me guess - this will allow all of those poor people in small business to go back to MS Word to create their email newsletters (or Outlook to send them) after we took all the time explaining why that was a bad idea. Nice. I’d venture to agree with another post here - Microsoft is going to really get into the email marketing game. They are jumping in heaviuly into CRM - it actually makes sense to allow users to build and deploy emails from their suite in the not to distant future. Will this hit guys like Campaign Monitor hard?

  29. Anon_user
    January 13, 2007 4:42am

    Why is this such a big deal?  HTML emails are far more dangerous and very annoying anyway.  Go back to plain text for emails and use webpages to be creative.

  30. Sank
    January 13, 2007 4:44am

    I like it.  I’ve gotten emails from clients using the background images just b/c they look “pretty” and it ends up destroying the message formatting when I try to reply.  Also, it’s less junk taking up bandwidth.  If you need graphical pretty things sent to specific people, find another way.

  31. Gary
    January 13, 2007 4:45am

    Hate to be a spoiler, but I long for the days when my email didn’t look like a webpage.

    Email should be fast and efficient.

    Graphical email is not.

    As for what you can do to “stop this”, probably the only thing you are going to be able to do is either buy the majority share in Microsoft or get hired on the Outlook development team and advance to a high enough position as to be able to make the decisions about the direction of the software.

  32. Rich Black
    January 13, 2007 4:46am

    I’m no fan of using the Word rendering engine, but the real problem lies in the overuse of HTML mail.  Anyone who doesn’t use Outlook already has problems similar to the ones this switch will cause, and there are only two ways to ensure perfect rendering; Use plain text for emails, and use PDFs for pizazz.

  33. Adam
    January 13, 2007 4:47am

    I’m almost positive it has to do with the whole Anti-Trust issue. The answer that would make the most sense to me would be the word rendering engine is part of Office. IE is not and therefore instigate the issue that people are being forced to upgrade and use IE versus alternatives. I think its a step in the right direction but i believe that it has hindered the users experiance because of it. Only time will tell if they stick to their guns and give some resolution on it.

    I was a beta tester of Office 2007 and i actually thoroughly enjoyed the software. When i went back to 2003 when switching jobs i actually became less efficient. Also i never even noticed the issue and i’m betting others wont either.

  34. Sam Liddicott
    January 13, 2007 4:52am

    “No Frames”

    Find a way to generate a belittling message that only shows when word is rendering the email.

    Let it explain that Word is below par, well out of date etc, and suggest alternatives.

    MS may hate their customers to be repeatedly told that their email client is not good enough.

  35. Pete
    January 13, 2007 4:52am

    I cannot comprehend why MS refuses to comply with well-established standards. Normally, I wouldn’t be too concerned, but I send e-mails regularly and it’s already hard enough getting mail to render evenly across e-mail clients (even with minimal css/html). This is just plain stupid. Thanks for the thorough explanation, though!

  36. CB
    January 13, 2007 4:53am

    I think this is a great move. I’m sick and tired of html email and hopefully this will reduce the number of people that think its cool to put html, background images, and all that other crap in an email.

  37. ICTerify
    January 13, 2007 4:56am

    Currently using Vista and Office 2007 and I do not see these problems problems. I even make HTML based newsletters an I have do do not changes to the way i create them. It looks like FUD to me.

  38. Fred Johnsen
    January 13, 2007 4:58am

    stop crying… BUY A MAC!!!

  39. Defiant1
    January 13, 2007 4:59am

    I don’t want a browser rendering my emails. I want text emails. I’d be content if all pictures were attachments. Go back another 5 years Microsoft.

    Defiant1

  40. Nick Schmidt
    January 13, 2007 5:00am

    outlook sucks anyway.. well at least on my computer here at work…
    outlook is sooooo slow

  41. Scot
    January 13, 2007 5:05am

    Hey, maybe now we can get email back to what it’s supposed to be. Text-based.  HTML email has always been problematic and you’ve never been really sure about what the other person would see depending on their email client.

  42. dave
    January 13, 2007 5:07am

    I absolutely, positively never, ever use Outlook, except when I’m forced to at some jobsite. So I could really care less what email rendered within that idiotic program looks like.

    Email to Outlook users should, from now on, be considered text only by default. If someone complains, there’s a solution: quit using Outlook.

  43. Mike Silverstein
    January 13, 2007 5:07am

    Let’s talk a little bit about spamminess, and why HTML might not be the way to go in email.

    We run SpamAssassin, a requirement when each email account averages 150+ spam messages per day.

    HTML is already suspicious and gets -10—-40 if HTML only. Since -50 is quarantine, your beautifully crafted HTML only message is precariously close to deletion already.

    Email containing .gif receive no score - they are automatically quarantined. Quarantine is more or less a death sentence for your email as there is so much spam in the quarantine, your message becomes hard to spot as legit. Nobody bothers to look in there unless an expected message is not received.

    HTML links are automatically -10. All links are examined and compared to a database and if present, deleted.

    There are dozens of other rules, most not HTML-related. But a regular-expression database match between words in your message might mean deletion - “stick” being too close to “stock” might dock you that final 10 points and quarantine.

    These are default rules. Some ISP’s might turn them up if they are really getting bombarded.

    Due to past abuse by marketers, text might actually be your best bet at getting your message through.

  44. david
    January 13, 2007 5:08am

    For years we were left with IE hacks to webpages so the design would look the same as it did in clean code on the rest of the browsers. The promise of IE7 to be hack free you’d think they’d import the rendering engine from IE7 into Outlook but instead are bringing Word’s rendering engine into the program. Yep, that’s innovation, I’m soo excited, I so look forward to this, (sarcasm). I work for a very large advertising agency, and we produce alot of html email. It’s been frustrating that we cant’ use CSS as much as we’d like because of email clients like Hotmail that seems to ignore or strip the code. But now we have to deal with Outlook 2007’s rendering engine of Word, possibly one of the worst ever developed. ;(

    No one in our IT or interactive groups are thrilled by this horrible decision from Microsoft. ;(

  45. bub
    January 13, 2007 5:11am

    its not about weather we should have html emails or not - its about choice, not being able to choose is the problem

  46. Bryan
    January 13, 2007 5:12am

    1. Email should be text only.
    2. Email should be text only.
    3. Though everyone complains about Microsoft, they will under absolutely no circumstances even consider trying any other product, so this is what we get.  We’re at the mercy of the beast.

  47. @@wasibo
    January 13, 2007 5:14am

    You’re funny!

    On topic tho, this is a lame move by ms. They want to slow development & keep their monopolies. Hey monopo’lies’ good one, I’m nearly funny too.

  48. WTL
    January 13, 2007 5:16am

    After some thought, I believe what Microsoft is thinking is that because Outlook will now use Word’s rendering engine, they will get people to *compose* emails in Word, so to get them formatted the way that they want, further locking people in to Office.

  49. kw
    January 13, 2007 5:20am

    Great.

    All those network managers who have spent so much time convincing employees to not open unknown word documents are now going to find they have no choice. (As the despised and vulnerable word engine will BE the email rendering engine.)

    This cracks this virus attack vector WIDE open!

    I whole heartedly agree that emails should be plain text, and hate when they have HTML and image content. This development only confirms my feelings on the matter.

    Want me to see your pretty pictures? Don’t waste my bandwidth. Send me a plain text url, and if I feel like it, I’ll cut and paste it into my browser of choice.

    Otherwise, just stay the hell out of my inbox.

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