Jun 24 2009
For a company that claims to believe in innovation and standards, and has spent five years redeeming itself in the web standards community, the decision to use the non-standards-compliant, decades-old Word rendering engine in the mail program that accompanies its shiny standards-compliant browser makes no sense from any angle. It’s not good for users, not good for business, not good for designers. It’s not logical, not on-brand, and the opposite of a PR win.
Sadly and pessimistically, I'm not at all surprised that Microsoft is going to stick with using Word to render HTML emails. Microsoft is a behemoth in many ways, and in the last several years it has become incredibly slow to adapt to standards that make the web an overall better place (for both, end-users and developers). Why should HTML email be any different (to them)? Yes, those of us who design and code HTML emails are up in arms about this. That's a good thing. But what I haven't heard anyone mention is what it means to the end-user, and more so, what it means to the businesses who require HTML email design services.
To the end-user it probably means little, other than an unpleasant experience for badly coded HTML emails. To the business who pay to have those created (either in-house or outsourced), it means higher costs. Why? Because Outlook 2010 will be yet another email program to test for, which means even slightly slower development/coding times and repeated tests to ensure accuracy.
Not convinced? Here's a short list of email programs that we test for:
- AOL 9
- Apple Mail 2.1 & 3
- Lotus Notes 6.5.4 & 7
- Lotus Notes 8
- Outlook 2000 (yes, there are still people using this archaic beast)
- Outlook 2003
- Outlook 2007
- Outlook Express 6
- Outlook XP
- Thunderbird
- Windows Mail
And those are just the desktop email clients. If there were a standard approach to HTML email, a lot of time would be saved and thus, money would be saved. But since when does Microsoft care about that?
PS - Yes, I realize that some people absolutely deplore HTML emails. Good for them. The fact is, it works for marketing and it's not going away. Get over it.