Filed under: Design, E-mail, Microsoft, Browsers
Much ado about Outlook 2010's lame HTML rendering
By sticking with Word's rendering engine, which Microsoft started using to render email in Outlook 2007, Microsoft would also be sticking designers with outdated font tags and tables, instead of the latest CSS hotness. According to The Email Standards Project, Microsoft's reason for doing this is to allow Outlook users to use Word's prepackaged design tools and email templates, and have those render correctly for other Outlook users. Microsoft itself is worried that rendering through a browser could slow performance and lead to inconsistent appearance across different HTML engines.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Todd said 10:46AM on 6-24-2009
Excuse me? Office 2010 is what $500.00+ ? A large office pays $30,000.00 for Office 2010?
Spending 500 bucks for software that cannot render simple HTML *is not" "nothing". Its a total assault on the Consumer, bordering on fraud.
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Sanskrit said 10:49AM on 6-24-2009
+1 QFT.
Stupidity like this drove me from Outlook to Thunderbird, and this just ensures that I'll be staying there.
typoink said 1:48PM on 6-24-2009
My office has bought plenty of software that can't render HTML properly. They're called "things that aren't web browsers." Outlook is one of them.
Now, I'm not defending this decision in particular, but I can understand where MS is coming from -- complex HTML email isn't usually the "important stuff" anyways, and it makes sense that they'd want to make Outlook 100% cross-compatible with the rest of the Office programs.
And, especially since they take so much flak about building IE into their other programs, there'd obviously be complaining either way.
Todd said 2:05PM on 6-24-2009
@typoink
Then the retail box that Office 2010 comes in, sitting on the shelf at Staples for $399.99, needs to say right on the front, in big prominent letters:
"WILL NOT RENDER SIMPLE HTML"
Ben M. Schorr said 1:36PM on 6-25-2009
I'm sorry but this is the sort of hysteria that's been pervading this debate. Outlook 2010, just like Outlook 2007 before it will render simple html just fine. I've sent, and received, thousands of HTML e-mail messages with Outlook 2007 in the last four years or so and had barely a hiccup.
Users send and receive HTML messages in Outlook 2007 (which also uses Word to render) every second of every day and the vast majority of them have no problems with it at all.
The issue here is far more esoteric and relates, mostly, to the lack of support for CSS in Word. It's not "simple HTML" that is the problem, it's the kind of complex, layered, HTML that web designers and e-mail marketers want to send. The average user has never even tried to use CSS in an e-mail message and doesn't care to.
Furthermore, if you DO receive an HTML message in Outlook that doesn't render properly it only takes about two clicks to have Outlook open that message in your browser where it will render using your browser's engine instead. Hardly a big crisis in those few occasions when you actually do have a significant rendering problem.
For more info: http://www.officeforlawyers.com/outlook/htmlrendering.htm
der_tuxman said 10:48AM on 6-24-2009
"inconsistent appearance"? Ah? Now guess why.
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Crazy Serb said 11:02AM on 6-24-2009
What a bunch of f'tards those MS guys are...
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HZ said 11:37AM on 6-24-2009
"Microsoft itself is worried that rendering through a browser could slow performance and lead to inconsistent appearance across different HTML engines."
Really ? Sure, Every IE follows standards perfectly, right ? Like if you open a page in every standard compliant browser and IE, the later shows it perfectly like the rest of them ?
Microsoft, Microsoft...you'll never learn.
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HZ said 11:39AM on 6-24-2009
Oh no...I get it now! They are actually worried about using IE as rendering engine because of .. well, IE ;)
Daniel Blois said 2:01PM on 6-24-2009
A better solution than switching to IE rendering is creating it so Word uses web Standards. In this way you gain the benefits of Word editors and the HTML rendering.
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wrabbit said 7:29PM on 6-24-2009
Wow, I thought using word rendering engine in outlook 2007 was a monumentally stupid decision, but this, this just dwarfs it in comparison.
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Ben M. Schorr said 1:41PM on 6-25-2009
Actually, it's the exact same decision. Nothing has changed in that regard. Outlook 2007 used Word to render HTML and Outlook 2010 does the same.
Cnett said 10:56AM on 6-25-2009
Maybe microsoft could call on Apple's programmers for help here. lol. Why does microsoft always make personal computing MORE complicated instead of less? Just get a Mac and don't use Outlook.
http://fixoutlook.org
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Quikboy said 12:37AM on 6-26-2009
HTML rendering in Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail on the other hand are surprisingly much better.
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Paul said 7:28AM on 7-15-2009
Ben M. Schorr,
You are dead wrong!
First, try to save an HTML email that Outlook 2007+ has received with HTML/CSS that Word does not support and then display it in any web browser. You will find that the received HTML has been manipulated, not preserved as sent. So this is not just a rendering problem!
Second, Word rendering lacks more than CSS support. See Microsoft's knowledge base article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx for details. The truth is UGLY!
My opinion is that they should fully support HTML via the IE rendering engine as an option. If there really are corporate users that prefer the scaled back Word rendering engine then they can choose that option.
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