So I was reading the June 2007 issue of Windows IT Pro (a Penton publication), a section called ‘Getting to know Office 2007′ when I came across this question and answer:

Q: My HTML email messages don’t appear properly in Outlook 2007, yet they display correctly in Outlook 2000. What’s different?

A: Outlook 2007 uses a different rendering engine than its predecessors… Unless the situation changes, keep the following limitations in mind if you want your email messages to display properly for Outlook 2007 users:

• no support for background images (HTML or Cascading Style Sheets - CSS)
• no support for forms
• no support for Flash or other plug-ins
• no support for CSS floats
• no support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
• no support for CSS positioning
• no support for animated GIF files

Now, while this list looks grim, Gmail is nearly as bad. I recommend you take a look at Campaign Monitor’s CSS checklist. They have some great information (as well as other blog posts - specifically the one about how Microsoft set e-mail back 5 years with Outlook 2007).

So, back to my question, why do we tolerate? As someone that needs to send direct-email (for clients and for my own company) from time to time, I find it increasingly difficult to produce rich, engaging mail pieces. I’m not interested in sales or in sending spam, I’m talking direct, opt-in or customer based messages and invoices. My clients expect rich messages (I work in music and entertainment), and in some situations, rich e-mail is called for.In the corporate environment that Microsoft (in my opinion) seems to be targeting, plain-text, or ‘guarded’ e-mail may be the focus, but shouldn’t the display of media be a choice of the application’s user?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 4:06 pm and is filed under code, rant, web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.