Microsoft goes retro

Posted by: admin Category: General

Microsoft's shiny new Office 2007 includes Outlook 2007. You'd expect that to be an improvement right? Unfortunately it's not...

When email is viewed in Outlook 2003 and earlier, the display of HTML email is actually handled by Internet Explorer. While IE is not the latest and greatest of browsers (IE6 has not been updated for over 5 years), it is at least fairly capable (and was even quite cutting edge in 2001). This has changed in Outlook 2007 - HTML email is now displayed using Word. Yes, you heard that right, Word. This will mean that the vast majority of HTML email will simply fall apart and may even be unreadable - documents that may previously have worked perfectly in Outlook 2006. Ars Technica has an excellent appraisal of the impact of this change.

It's clear to us that Microsoft don't even trust their own code – historically Internet Explorer has been a prime site for virus and spyware infections – yet they assure us that the latest and greatest Internet Explorer 7 is the "most secure ever", yet they don't trust it enough to use it themselves. At the same time, they've completely failed to update the dismal HTML handling of Word.

Microsoft have posted a guide to what Word and Outlook 2007 do support - the absence of support for the background and float CSS properties in particular is cause for concern - you will no longer be able to place text over the top of images. The temptation is to put text inside images, but that's a sure way to make your messages instantly unreadable to those with images disabled, and represents a massive reduction in accessibility – something that may be a legal requirement in more enlightened jurisdictions. The tools to help template creators deal with these shortcomings seem to have disappeared from Microsoft's site.

There is of course an easy workaround for yourself, but it's harder to overcome the inertia of the Microsoft hegemony in the wider market.