Inkbase

Just when HTML email design was beginning to get a little easier, along comes Microsoft Outlook 2007. Now, I know there are people out there that absolutely hate HTML email. That’s fine. However, there are people—and clients—that love it, so this topic is of some importance.

From Microsoft’s “Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007″:

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses the HTML parsing and rendering engine from Microsoft Office Word 2007 to display HTML message bodies. The same HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS) support available in Word 2007 is available in Outlook 2007.

Yes, that says Microsoft Office Word 2007. For HTML rendering. Word. HTML… I’ll give you a moment.

With Word rendering the HTML we can forget about using floats, CSS positioning, background images and plenty other items that have become the mainstay of standards-based web design. Instead, we’re back to using tables for HTML emails… in 2007.

I think I need a moment.

Further reading:

Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007
Microsoft takes email design back 5 years
Microsoft makes accessible and standards compliant HTML email impossible

22 Jan 2007 |