02/04/2007 
8 Comment(s)Outlook 2007 Looses a Decade.
Microsoft are to astound us all again with their utterly unexplainable stupidity. I for one am dumbfounded.
I've just read at Campaign Monitor that the chaps at Microsoft have made the decision to drop the Internet Explorer rendering engine for emails in Outlook 2007, in exchange for the rendering engine behind Microsoft Word.
To put things into perspective this sets the software back just shy of a decade, with HTML email support being stronger on MS Outlook 2000 than on 2007!
So what does this mean for us? Well Outlook 07 currently enjoys a 75-80% share of the corporate marketplace, meaning the majority of your business emails are landing in Outlook-powered inboxes. With that in mind, consider this. The new Outlook 07 has:
- No background image support - Background images in divs and table cells are gone. Embedded images only.
- Poor background color support - Background colours in divs and table cells work fine but nested divs and table cells break.
- No support for float or position - You know what this means; no more CSS based layouts. It's all tables from here, im afraid.
- Terrible box model support - Don't expect to achieve too much with margins and paddings.
I wonder if it ever occurred to Microsoft to upgrade their Wordsuite, rather than downgrading Outlook 2007? This decision is just beyond reason.
I need to get a Mac. Happy 2007 folks.
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On 12th of January 2007 J Phill said:
Yeah I heard about this and it makes me want to puke. Microsoft just doesn't get it.
And yes, you do need to get a Mac! :)
On 12th of January 2007 kitsimons said:
Hah - I've just posted an article on the same subject. I'm stunned. I can't imagine what possible justification there is for such a decision.
I'll echo what J Phill says though - you should get a Mac ;-)
On 12th of January 2007 P.J. Onori said:
I purchase my first work-only Mac on Christmas Day and after we swtich the file server to Ubuntu, we will be a Windows-free household.
Get a Mac. Get Parallels. Be happy.
On 13th of January 2007 lorissa said:
wow. what a bout of stupidity. it doesn't make any sense at all.
maybe it's a good thing that my windows machine died the other day.
On 16th of January 2007 Mark said:
I use a Mac at work and a PC at home and they both have their good bits and bad bits.
However, Microsoft will continue to do what THEY think is best for everyone!