5 ms·
I think it was around Outlook 2007 Microsoft decided that instead of using Internet Explorer to render their emails, they would use Microsoft Word. That's right
by dntrkv 13y ago
I think it was around Outlook 2007 Microsoft decided that instead of using Internet Explorer to render their emails, they would use Microsoft Word. That's right. Word. And now whenever you try to use even the most basic CSS rules, Outlook fucks it up very badly. Then there is that abomination called Lotus Notes (mainly <8.5). Yes, I have been doing a lot of emails lately and it is the worst experience in web dev I have ever had.
Outlook 2007 makes IE6 look like the best browser in the world.
- splatzone 13y agoThank you for the explanation, that's insane.
- andybak 13y agoIf I recall correctly - they did it for security reasons. i.e. Internet Explorer was so full of holes they thought the Word HTML rendered would be easier to keep secure. In the sense that it did a lot less and thus presented a smaller attack surface, they were right.
- niteshade 13y agoGuess its a pity Microsoft never heard about sandboxing, eh?
- dntrkv 13y agoIt is very insane. You would think that after getting such a bad rep with IE that they would make sure they don't get themselves into that kind of situation again, but no. They keep releasing shitty software that holds the rest of the industry back. I never was a Microsoft hater, but in the past few weeks of writing HTML/CSS (if you can call it that) for Outlook support, I have cursed Outlook more than any other piece of software I can remember. You can read more about it here: http://www.email-standards.org/blog/entry/microsoft-to-ignore-web-standards/ http://www.email-standards.org/blog/entry/microsoft-to-ignor...
- cookingrobot 13y agoI believe the motivation was that most Outlook users were at corporations who sent/received most of their emails from coworkers who also used Outlook. What these users really wanted was the ability to edit and format their emails the same way they did in Word. Word really is a fantastic document editor/formatter, and I don't know of any html doc editor that comes close to the flexibility, ease, and power of Word. So they traded standards for what people really wanted - email that they could format.
- eli 13y agoYou left out the most amazing part: they doubled down on the MS Word rendering engine in Office 2013. At one point there was a letter writing campaign to ask them to change their mind.
- netghost 13y agoUnfortunately the template they used in the email failed to render on outlook...
- ryanSrich 13y ago<!-- [!mso] --> That little comment is a life saver. I've noticed that Outlook, particularly 2007+, will play nicely with CSS so long as your styles are only applied to table elements. Put some padding on a 'p' tag and you won't see anything happen. Likewise mobile gmail on a phone browser will not render a responsive email. Not sure if ZURB has given that any attention or if they intended to focus on the rendering of native clients.
- porker 13y agoAFAIK there's no work-around for mobile GMail on a phone. I've been banging my head against it this week. Given up for now and left native Android/iOS mail app users having the better experience.
- elm232 13y agoCheck out Ink's block-grid (http://zurb.com/ink/docs.php#block-grid http://zurb.com/ink/docs.php#block-grid). It's a lifesaver for working with Gmail mobile. Alternatively, if you don't need Outlook support, ZURB's original responsive templates support Gmail mobile quite well (http://zurb.com/playground/responsive-email-templates http://zurb.com/playground/responsive-email-templates).