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Microsoft takes email design back 5 years

January 13, 2007

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:

No background images - Background images in divs and table cells are gone, meaning Mark's image replacement technique is out the window.
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.
No support for float or position - Completely breaking any CSS based layouts right from the word go. Tables only.
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.

Outlook 2000

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.

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.
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.
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.

Posted in: Tips & Resources

516 Comments

gwz
November 24, 2007 1:11am

Using HTML in emails is a bad habit anyway. Email=plain text. Email with html=spam.
ahem
November 24, 2007 1:27am

HTML emails are crap anyways. I don’t understand how people can stand them. My client is set to “textmode” so I don’t have to endure pictures and flashy stuff.
William
November 24, 2007 1:48am

After all these features been dumped by Outlook 2007, one would think it would be faster for Outlook 2007 to handle HTML messages. But NO, it still the slowest email clients I haven seen, making my P4 machine into a 486.
Jan
November 24, 2007 3:11pm

Oh, cool. Perhaps someone will finally realize that E-mail is a much better place if people stick to plain text and focus on content, rather than form. I’m all for it.
Jack Carpenter
November 25, 2007 10:05am

I just an garden variety computer user who has used Outlook since the beginning.
I bought bothe Vista Premium and Office 2007.

Both represent a nightmare and a disaster.

In order for me to do my work it take hour to work with these products. I do not have the time to relearn doing things I am used to doing in previous versions of Outlook. How stupid to remove sensible software action and replace them with difficult new requirement (using strange interface which leaves out valuable action or give you partial relief). I thought Microsoft was supposed to make using a computer easier.

Jack Carpenter
Brookline,
Massachusetts
J-Rub
November 27, 2007 8:36pm

As a developer, designer, and avid online shopper, I see a great use for HTML/CSS in email. An example is any customer contact email i.e. order confirmation. I will always prefer a well laid out page of the items I’ve ordered and order total as opposed to a text blob that is difficult to parse with my eyes.

There is a level of readability that is lost when all text is the same size and there are no visual elements to direct the eye. It’s called usability and the same people that are screaming “no html in my email” still want improved usability in every other iPhone, website, or other gadget/technology in their life. Those people contradict themselves.

Remember that we don’t “read” web pages, we scan them, and the same can be true for an email. I want to quickly be able to scan an email for the info I need: an order number, order total, etc. I’d prefer all of the company’s copyrights and weasel clauses stay small and lighter color—out of my way so I can get to the real information.
Raven Morris
November 30, 2007 6:07pm

This is Microsoft’s most obvious attempt at vendor lock-in, but I think this one is going to turn around and bite them in the ass.

There are hundreds of thousands of shopping sites, corporate users, sign up forms, invoices, ticketing information, etc. which is sent out to the end user, automatically by the system, which is HTML formatted. If even 10% of those sites are rendered unreadable by this change, that will be a *major* disruption to companies profits, having to deal with these issues.

More than half the web sites out there that issue automatic e-mails use HTML formatting. Many of the sites don’t even have a web developer anymore after the initial setup, there will be a lot of tech support issues going around over this.

I don’t think Microsoft will get away with this one, it is going to cause too many of Microsoft’s paying customers too much trouble.
recipe
December 1, 2007 5:21am

Tasha
-Micro$oft is a monopoly. Monopolies do whatever they want. I prefer Thunderbird.-

right you are!
elVakk
December 4, 2007 2:24pm

Thunderbird is the new shit.
Microsoft is going down.
MWK
December 4, 2007 7:19pm

M/S is going backward instead of forward. Not supporting animated GIFs is unbelievable. M/S may think 2007 is used primarily by business but that ‘s just not the case. Bring back the fuctionality of older versions of Outlook. Give us HTML support via Internet Explorer, not Word.
graham
December 4, 2007 9:11pm

Given the slow take up of e-commerce for smaller shops - who are always nervous of paying out money when margins are tight enough as it is - I can see some giving up completely on branded email
Dragan
December 21, 2007 1:53pm

It seems that there are two camps here with completely expectable response to the new Outlook philosophy: ‚ÄúSatisfied Receivers‚Äù (frustrated by the amount of HTML spam previous versions tolerated) and ‚ÄúDissatisfied Senders‚Äù (frustrated by the fact that their glitzy nonsensical formatting is finally in jeopardy). You can tell where I‚Äôm going with this argument‚Ä¶

I do agree that the E-mail is heavily abused medium and that, generally speaking, its future is greatly compromised by advocates of stylized messages. What is wrong in sending a URL to a more ‚Äúflashy‚Äù presentation in a message body? In the end, there are many other E-mail clients so convince your receivers in benefits of your HTML messages and they‚Äôll potentially move away from the ‚ÄúEvil Empire.‚Äù Be sure you articulate your arguments in plain text so they receive it ;)
Iain
December 30, 2007 7:15pm

I have been running an html newsletter for gobarging.com for over4 years now - 54 monthly editions…(record..?) it also goes out in text versions via Vertical response - a great company btw…

I just got Outlook 2007 loaded and when I received my latest test for edition 54 was aghast to see my images and layout totally screwed. I had to revert from CSS float commands to align, hspace and vspace - deprecated tags..to get it to work….that’s annoying, but ok so what..?

Well apart from going backwards, all my previous 53 editions are now unreadable - so I have to think about going back through them all and changing out the floats - quite a task for a newsletter with a lot of images and pages - used very successfully to market the products to an opt in list of some 14-16 thousand readers…

Thanks Microsoft, I feel so much more secure….and I had to lose the nice snow effect header flash file because - yes you’ve guessed it, it was a security risk - all the virtual snow might have harmed somebody’s screen or something….ah well….thanks again, enjoy the pizza in the dark room and feel safe from the rest of us…...
InternetMasters.org
January 4, 2008 9:18pm

For almost every piece of software there is always a ton of great alternatives.
You should consider testing and using open source and free software.
InternetMasters.org
Marnix Bras
January 12, 2008 6:37pm

Whoopie!

A background image in the body-tag is working in outlook 2007
be sure to add a 100% wide table as well in your HTML, with the same background image…. some webmailclients do filter the body-tag.

Background positioning in 2007 is not possible, so be sure to make it big enough, that is does not repeat unwanted (e.g. a vertical gradient of 1 px wide and 2000 px high repeats only horizontal)
Ryan
January 19, 2008 8:16pm

One of the CSS styles that don’t work in Outlook 2007 is the overflow style for DIV’s. I use it to keep a particular cell from wrapping or stretching when the descriptive text inside goes over a certain length. Does anyone know of an equivalent for either DIV’s or tables that will work in Outlook 2007?
SterlingSolved
January 20, 2008 4:58am

Microsoft has incredible vision.
My guess is this move is _absolutely_ designed to limit the email client platform capability of Outlook 2007. Over the last year, we have witnessed a significant increase in PDF-based newsletters. (and consequently, it is my belief, PDF-based virii and spam) Long-term there will be a “need” for more ‘active’ content. The microsoft solution that I will *bet* will be (undoubtedly) fully-integrated and wholly supported? Microsoft SilverLight. Imagine an electronic communications center with full video and “rich interactive application” technology as good as - better - than video games today. Thats the future. Full development product lines as well, with Microsoft Expression Studio and Microsoft Visual Studio. All in support of the Microsoft World…
Word is terrible
January 23, 2008 10:13pm

Not sure if someone has commented on this already but MS Word 2007 is terrible. Every time I use it, I start going on the web to see if I am the only person who has these problems just to reassure myself that I am not that much of an idiot. It’s not simply a matter of getting use to it. The categories of functions are unintuitive and it goes against all the conventions that MS has built in the past to create a new look and feel that has no substance. E.g. it’s harder to find something and there is no pay off once you locate the feature. It’s not anything new or improved. it seems that did some sort of grouping analysis based on the designer’s perspective of how people use this thing and then voila… get use to it users! Read the manual users! Take this tutorial users! It’s your fault… Not only that, no one can read .docx files as I am the only idiot that brought the 2007 version (unless I save it as a .doc… so what’s the point of the upgrade?)does any one know a way to go back to the “classic” 2000 view from MS 2007?
January 26, 2008 5:17pm

The only good thing to say about this is that it will help reduce file sizes if everyone quick uses HTML which may not be a bad thing. It seems like nobody cares about overhead anymore files get bigger, programs get bigger and our computers have to get more powerful just to keep even. Programmers have become so lazy and everything is getting huge and cumbersome! Give me back DOS!
I Hate Microsoft
February 1, 2008 8:04am

This has caused so many problems that it is unbelievable Microsoft would do this. Bill Gates is an arse and an interfering c*nt with his b*tch wife swanning around Africa etc pretending to care when they are really just making more money from their ‘foundation’.

They are killing Africans with their ‘vaccination’ programme. Evil b*stards.

Anyway, I have switched to Open Office and Thunderbird. Quality, free and not Microsoft. Is Bill on the Celebrity Deathwatch list? Surely it can’t be much longer…
PKayne
February 1, 2008 10:16pm

Microsoft.. WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What have I done to you. I am only a lowly web designer. Is it because I have accepted CSS and XHTML into my life and have forsaken tables? Is it because I have strived to deliver semantic code and promote accessibility balanced with aesthetic functionality only to result in a richer user experience? What was wrong with that?!

At times I have tried to work you, my Dark Lord. After realizing that the CSS ways would not working out well on Outlook 2003, I secretly indulged in some table tagging. After I was done I was so ashamed but my email newsletter worked out and now I get this news. What the hell, why do you want me to use you WYSIWYG whoremess Word so much.

No, I rebuke thee! Stand back Microsoft, stand back!
designforge
February 2, 2008 8:01pm

I’ve had enough of fanboys harping on about “stop whining - use firefox/thunderbord/macs”. Take a step into the real world and think about how it affects real freelance designers who have to conform to their large corporate clients standards - this move is archaic - like so many others I can design an email nice and quickly using defined standards knowing that it will have at least a 90% compliance with browsers/email clients - now I have to spend 2/3 times as long coding them up without the ability to charge my clients a great deal more… thanks microsoft! What the hell were you thinking!
Julie Hyry
February 9, 2008 11:14pm

Just a word of warning: I installed the MS Validator tool in Dreamweaver 8, validated my code and after a few tweaks, it passed with flying colors. When sent to a small test group of Outlook 2007 users, (including myself) it crashed every time. So don’t think having the validator will save your emails. Best just to bite the bullet and dumb it down.
welshmnt
February 14, 2008 5:17pm

Good. I know you don’t want to hear. But get the formatting out! They are welcome to have twenty different incompetent HTML rendering engines, as long as is a strip HTML option, who cares.

Entourage even insists on displaying image attachments inline with email body. AAARRRGGHHHHH!
Bill Fant
February 16, 2008 10:28pm

I’ve been a web developer for over 13 years now and I have WASTED SO MUCH TIME because Microsoft cannot develop decent products nor get onboard with standards!!! Many colleagues and other developers feel the same. It really blows they have the most market share when they cannot even play well with others. This is one of many reasons people are dumping MS for Linux or Mac.

Time for a class-action lawsuit?!?!

Developers should be compensated for all the lost hours and dollars due to Microsoft’s garbageware and lack of support for standards. It’s almost impossible to comprehend sometimes. I really wish I knew how to go about getting a class-action lawsuit organized and moving forward. I’m sick of this crap already!!!
Bill Fant
February 16, 2008 11:31pm

Ok, ok…. egg of face… maybe.

I just realized this is an article from 2007 and not 2008. The link was just emailed to me and I was immediately enraged thinking of all the lost hours due to MS’s lack of support for standards and their shoddy software. Anyhow, not sure where this issue stands at the moment, but I’m looking further into it. The two UPDATE links above didn’t help much.
Not Surprised
February 19, 2008 11:39pm

HTML email is here. Many companies use it in their newsletters that are sent to other companies, a good percentage of which use Outlook (as it is nicely tied to Exchange).

The change is NOT due to negligence, security, or hatred toward the email designer.

It’s a calculated move that is about holding ground. Digging in and slowing the hemoraging. They are losing the emerging markets (Mobile OS’s, All things media, and now gaming is looking weak). And it’s looking hopeful that most websites will be standards-based one day. On that note, please stop developing IE-dependent websites people. It’s just as wrong as everybody feels this Outlook move is.

We’ve all seen it countless times, but, for some reason, do not realize what is being done to us or we just keep letting it slide. Rather than making great standards-based products, they will implement technology that is not only exclusive, but preys upon users in markets where they have an advantage (market share).

Stop hitting the snooze button. It’s time to wake up now.
UpdateBoy
February 26, 2008 5:08pm

Outlook 2007 has been out for quite a while and I have been using it since it’s launch. So far I have yet to see 1 email that does not display correctly, the only error I have encountered is from an enterprise application that was sending links that outlook could not understand, the vendor realized this and fixed it quickly without too much harm.

As for the so called marketing emails (SPAM to me), they are being filtered by my spams filters and I could care less if they do not work properly.

On the other side, MS did this change because they lost the legal battle and had to separate IE from their products. So I guess you either agree with the people that thinks that MS should let others have part of the market (means accept also this change that clearly benefit email products that work better than Outlook), or you think Microsoft should rule the world (means, let them whatever they want to do).

If you paid for MS products (like me), you know what you pay for and you agree to pay that amout for what you got. If you don’t like it, simply go look for better products. If you don’t pay Microsoft and you are not happy with what they do, simply work with other vendors. You choose your business, Microsoft do not impose his own law to you.
NotSpam
February 27, 2008 12:22am

For those who say that HTML is only used for spam (or even newsletters), you’re wrong. I use it all the time for reporting from our internal applications for our users. Putting things in a color coded table does wonders for readability over plain text.

And this coming from someone who personally uses as much open source as possible and sets his default outgoing e-mail format to plain text.

To say this isn’t an issue is foolish.
tflip
March 4, 2008 11:03am

Microsoft are totally anti open source. They have only been brought there kicking and screaming, most notably by the EU. Why would they want to support anything other than a system that demands that only if you are using MS products will things render properly? Outlook express was just a stalking horse for Outlook and Office the way IE explorer worked for Windows and the net. They don’t want you be online unless you are using their product, pure and simple. Good old rapacious capitalism, with a monopoly the ultimate aim.

You also get all the problems of a monopoly of course, crap design, poor response to problems, bloatware with bells and whistles you won’t need and can’t find if you do, and of course it will break and need updates continuously. Outlook has always been an extremely poor program, one of the worst in the range of MS products, up there with Access. Not being able to compete with Thunderbird or Eudora in the design and reliability stakes, and facing a new danger in Google what do we expect? A quick retreat into anti-competitive trading using market share as leverage. Operating in a civilized manner with other programs, forget it. Office 2007, and Outlook in particular, are little more than reactionary thugs waiting to mug your computer use.

The best thing we can all do is deny Microsoft market share. If you send emails add a little note in the signature saying that the email you send is always open and compliant and if the recipient is having trouble reading it they are probably a victim of Microsoft’s anti-competition policy. Suggest they switch to Thunderbird as a default email program and put in a link to the software. You might want to put in a link to Open Office as well.

In the meantime all hail the Chinese and the Russians who treat MS with the contempt it deserves and who will no doubt soon have some very competitive alternative products and operating systems out there.
tflip
March 4, 2008 11:03am

Microsoft are totally anti open source. They have only been brought there kicking and screaming, most notably by the EU. Why would they want to support anything other than a system that demands that only if you are using MS products will things render properly? Outlook express was just a stalking horse for Outlook and Office the way IE explorer worked for Windows and the net. They don’t want you be online unless you are using their product, pure and simple. Good old rapacious capitalism, with a monopoly the ultimate aim.

You also get all the problems of a monopoly of course, crap design, poor response to problems, bloatware with bells and whistles you won’t need and can’t find if you do, and of course it will break and need updates continuously. Outlook has always been an extremely poor program, one of the worst in the range of MS products, up there with Access. Not being able to compete with Thunderbird or Eudora in the design and reliability stakes, and facing a new danger in Google what do we expect? A quick retreat into anti-competitive trading using market share as leverage. Operating in a civilized manner with other programs, forget it. Office 2007, and Outlook in particular, are little more than reactionary thugs waiting to mug your computer use.

The best thing we can all do is deny Microsoft market share. If you send emails add a little note in the signature saying that the email you send is always open and compliant and if the recipient is having trouble reading it they are probably a victim of Microsoft’s anti-competition policy. Suggest they switch to Thunderbird as a default email program and put in a link to the software. You might want to put in a link to Open Office as well.

In the meantime all hail the Chinese and the Russians who treat MS with the contempt it deserves and who will no doubt soon have some very competitive alternative products and operating systems out there.
Ryan
March 4, 2008 11:45pm

Two words: OUTLOOK SUCKS!
end of story or find another email client.

We need an open source project that will be the new outlook!
How to view all e-mail messages in plain text form
March 14, 2008 1:10am

On the Tools menu, click Trust Center, and then click E-mail Security. Under Read as Plain Text, click to select the Read all standard mail in plain text check box.

—————
This option lets you view all e-mail messages in plain text format.
—————

At work, connected to Exchange, this works perfect.
At home I just use anothe e-mailer ... The Bat!

http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/index.php
nate
March 19, 2008 6:34am

This is just as ridiculous as every other Microsoft genius product. Clearly the hate the world and seek to destroy us all by creating the worlds worst software. Awesome.
Get OVER It
March 21, 2008 1:54am

NEWSFLASH: CSS doesn’t magically render an email, a web page or anything else “good”. Email designers, earn your keep and work with the given arena presented, whatever it is. End of story. Be a good designer. Outlook will change, CSS will change, HTML will change…THEY ALWAYS DO. Rely and lean most heavily on your skills and good design, not your tools (however good or bad they may be). I work on email marketing and design every day. Get over it or start your own Microsoft that creates an email client that is most of the market share. These are your choices.
Mike
March 23, 2008 1:07am

This really is a travesty for the Internet community. From a business perspective it’s easy to see why Microsoft might use one rendering engine (MS Word 2007) instead of two (IE + MS Word) in Outlook 2007… easier to maintain, easier to manage, etc. Microsoft appears more than willing to save on its own development costs, while increasing the development costs for nearly everyone else doing email/html development.

I would recommend email content developers to add two things to their emails to combat Microsoft’s blatant disregard for standards and the developer community at large:

1) A “View as a web page” link so that users with rendering problems (i.e., Outlook 2007) can view the email as it was intended to be viewed.

2) A disclaimer at the bottom of the page alerting users, “This page is compatible with Outlook 2003 and below. Users with Outlook 2007 should click the ‘View as a web page’ link above, because of problems with Outlook’s new rendering engine.”
Mike
March 23, 2008 1:13am

P.S. You can do something like what I’ve recommended above (unless you have a better idea) OR you can “bend over” and take it like the person who posted before me.
Continue to Get OVER It
March 27, 2008 2:37am

If you mean continuing to get the job done and conduct business with my customers in mind, then, yes, by all means, I’m bending over and taking it quite willingly. You will really show Microsoft who’s boss with little email notes broadcasting your inability to function in an app gaining market share. Adding a little mention in a “click here” link in email messages is ridiculous, something I doubt your email recipients are all that interested in. They won’t even notice is my bet. The masses DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK, they are interested in immediate gratification. Again, do something real, effect change or deal with it.
Still not Getting OVER It?
March 27, 2008 2:56am

http://www.bluehornet.com/whitepapers/Outlook2007.pdf Do a Google search for solutions to this problem. You’ll find answers. You’ll find more complaints and outcry but there are solutions out there. Even if Microsoft fixes it yesterday, you’ll still have to deal with it as an email marketer/designer. It’s out there. Wishing otherwise doesn’t make it so. Good luck and happy emailing!
MR.SMES!
April 9, 2008 1:04pm

No I am not getting over it they tried to remove me from the competition by nearly wiping out my entire computer system in under 2 minutes and now that i have restored my computer system from the wrath of Microsoft i have detected a trojan viruse running around on my computer and nearly destroying it but i worked out how to stop it and destroy the trojan it is so simple all you have to do is turn off your computer and then turn it back on because this blocks it out from accessing the directory while the computer is off, but with other cases when damage is already done and you have to activate system restore it’s a lot harder and let me give you some advice when those 3 questions pop up with yes and no answers you better read them thouroughly and read them good and understand them and click yes on all of them or other wise your computer is practically dead and you can say by, by computer system, not my fault if this happens it just happened after i had started up AVG and done a regular viruse scan it picked up a threat and then well it all started there the scan was running slower and when i tried to stop it and quarintine the threat well my computer started running slow i then restarted my computer 3 times and pressed F3 on the 3rd time and then i had to see a Navy blue screen and pick the option labelled ’ System Restore ’ i then had to answer those 3 questions which came up on my desktop no toolbar no system nothing other than the first question and then the second question and then the 3rd and if i clicked yes on all the questions which i sure as hell did i then went through System Restore and praise the lord at the end of it, it all was restored but only by one thing, Luck and a whole lot of it and finally thank heavens my system was restored, it was just so scary and nothing i ever expected or had known about or been shown ever before in my entire life for the first time my system had nearly been entirely wiped and now well thank heavens i have restored it, i bet the computer nerds, from Microsoft themselves had something to do with this.
Ueli
April 16, 2008 12:44pm

Damn. I was totally shocket as I saw our companies newsletters after installing that fuckin’ new outlook.

I could’nt belive it…. As I saw this post I could belive it… and it is terrible…

fuck microsoft.

greeezz from SWITZERLAND

yes… also we use CSS….
Brian Shacklett
April 16, 2008 8:59pm

It wouldn’t be so bad if Outlook dropped support for HTML email completely. The trouble is that they’ve implemented broken support, so clients are going to want good looking emails that are going to be very difficult to provide. I really wish this was an all or nothing decision.
Jessica
April 16, 2008 11:28pm

I don’t get why many dislike designed emails..I love them!! A) The task of checking my email is always an arduous one and it is definitely rendered more enticing and manageable if it is easier and appealing to the eyes, not to mention the right side of the brain 2) Why have to redirect to every individual page on the web, when it can just as easily come to you? I think this is the direction we are and should be taking….which is apparent with the advent of google reader and newsfeeds. Bring your website directly to me. Saves ample amount of time which I don’t have to surf the web. 3) Attachments are a bitch. I hate uploading, downloading, re-uploading, and taking up space in people’s mailboxes. I think it is so much more time efficient for images and files to be embedded directly in the text. Obviously many abuse this with malicious behavior, but why doesn’t microsoft focus their resources on improving the validation of such code rather than nullifying it?

I never have any time, thus am a lover of automation and streamlined processes. For me, stylized email which represents most vividly a webpage, entity, etc, is the most automatic and visually compliant to my desire.
Laurence
April 18, 2008 4:42pm

Yes, this is a backwards step by Microsoft, and yes, it does cause a lot of issues… but to say that every other non Microsoft product doesn’t have issues is just untrue. I’ve had to do ‘tweaks’ in CSS and XHTML for many browsers and e-mail clients to get pages to render correctly.
I think the main problem here is that designers are relying too heavily on CSS when they could do something just as well with simple XHTML (or even HTML4). Keep it simple and you shouldn’t have a problem.
Lance
April 19, 2008 4:13pm

This it true. Keep it simple. For many of us out there we have non-webby’s actually designing the flats so in some cases we have to use a fair amount of css. I myself have never used css outside of inline. Too risky in any client. while I’m not fond of Microsoft in general, outlook has been pretty good translating my builds.
Mav
April 23, 2008 12:41am

To those of you saying HTML emails are bad (Hi Ted, go educate yourself on CSS BEFORE YOU POST, TWAT), you just DO NOT GET IT. This is NOT about whether or not they are bad, but LIMITING the options that a designer/coder has to work with.

This is a stupendously idiotic thing for Microsoft to do, and just increased my workload again to get things the way I WANT them to function.
emma douglas
April 27, 2008 5:37am

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.

this is a stupendously idiotic thing for Microsoft to do, and just increased my workload again to get things the way I WANT them to function.
emma douglas
April 27, 2008 5:38am

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.

this is a stupendously idiotic thing for Microsoft to do, and just increased my workload again to get things the way I WANT them to function.
SikDave
April 30, 2008 7:44am

Bugger!
intrigued
May 7, 2008 6:45am

My first guess is that this is actually a result of the Microsoft Anti-Trust settlement.

Microsoft’s inclusion of IE as a dependency for the operating system and other desktop software was a major portion of why they were cited as being anti-competitive. To a large degree it was the links between IE / Outlook and IE / Windows that killed Netscape and many of the other companies pushed out by Microsoft. (There were certainly other issues too, but this one got a lot of attention b/c it was directly visible to consumers.)

I haven’t been following the process closely enough to know whether the settlement might have influenced Microsoft’s decision, but they’ve been under a lot of pressure to come into compliance over the last year or two, especially in Europe.

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