Office 2007 = CSS pwnt.

[nixpayn]

Hello all.

I'm new to the community and i thought i'd like to jump in with a topic that is sort of an issue to me.

And that issue is Microsoft setting back email design by 5 years or so.

I'm sure most of you have read that with the new outlook, it uses the MS Word rendering engine instead of IE, so in essence.. no more live text on graphic backgrounds, no image maps and so on.

I'm a designer - which means i dont have to code these things ( :D ) - but i have to design for the developer, and knowing that MS has done this, its really limiting the things i can do to make emails attractive.

I work for a fairly large B2B hardware / software reseller and we do a lot of co-branded communications for companies like HP, Adobe and Microsoft, so a good chunk of my time each month is spent creating these emails to go out to our customers. Part of the mandate of any digital communication is compatibility of course - you have to be able to view it, otherwise whats the point.

And sadly there are a bunch of cool new features in Office that make the software (and ram heh) upgrade worthwhile for offices, so we have to step back and go back to the year 2000 and pretend there arent better ways to be creating these marketing materials.

My reason for posting was this - im curious how other designers / developers are dealing with this - anyone found any clever workarounds? And what you all think the odds are that MS will listen to the community and go back to the IE rendering engine.

Personally i think that the community will raise its voice enough to be heard that MS will change it back - eventually. AND i think that the new tools are probably far too overly complicated for inter-office email. There are far more options and tools than youre average desk jocky will ever use. I think they'll HAVE to realize they've essentially taken the tools away from the people who know how to use them, and given them to childen.

Im sure you've all seen power point presentations created by business guys - fly ins and sound effects for every character appearing on screen... *shudder*.

Cheers!

- nix

[colonel5]

my plain in simple answer is that I don't use Microsoft and am happier for it.

[nixpayn]

my plain in simple answer is that I don't use Microsoft and am happier for it.

the issue isnt with your or me using MS, the issue is that the people the email is being delivered to, probably are.

[DesignerScott]

I think e-mail shouldn't be glitzy and over-designed. I hate, even loathe getting stylized emails because they NEVER render properly. If I do get one, the first thing I do is look for the link that says, if you are having problems...

[nixpayn]

I think e-mail shouldn't be glitzy and over-designed. I hate, even loathe getting stylized emails because they NEVER render properly.

im not talking about star bursts and conflicting elements all competing for attention. A well designed email still uses the features they have stripped.

For all i care we could go back to the days of text only email, but thats not really an option.

As for why emails arent rendering properly, i guess that depends on your client. We test all our communications in gmail, hotmail, yahoo, outlook, web outlook, OE2007. No communication ever goes out unless it is rendering properly in the main popular clients.

You might be confusing spam with what im talking about, generally the people who get these communications from us sign up for them because they are paying customers or relevant partners. Say we have a promo where you can save 25% on an enterprise agreement - thats gonna save your business a ton of money. Chances are that if theyre getting that mail, they have an enterprise agreement, and can save 25% with whatever the promo is when they renew. If someone is gonna buy a $250,000 agreement from us, its on us to deliver messaging in an attractive and professional manner.

Like them or not, email blasts are part of the web design world - theyre a necessairy evil, and doing them well is always a challenge. MS has seriously hindered our ability to make these communications attractive, and that is an issue - espcially the guy doing contracts to design emails. He/she now has to show clients emails that basically look like junk compared to what he/she used to submit.

Im not talking about generic viagara or inside stock tips :)

[resdog]

Well, if you are designing for Gmail AND Hotmail, this Outlook issue shouldn't pose a problem. In combination, Gmail and hotmail combined do not support the background-image property (hence no image replacement), or image maps or even styles in teh <head> section.

Of course, I'm only speaking from the last time I did an email check (back in July of 06), so maybe Gmail and Hotmail have changed their support. But I've been desiging to be compliant in both Gmail and Hotmail, so there isn't much of an issue with me.

[Craig B]

I agree with nix that having a nicely designed email can help when sending emails to clients. We send out internal emails for events and external as well. It's always a challenge.

It's common practice and it shouldn't be seen as "glitzy" or "over-designed". It's just another way of communicating without paper.

Email design is similar to Web design because the email clients are all pretty disparate.

Good luck Nix.

[fiend]

This is another example of Microsoft bullying via market share. Microsoft probably owns 85% of the market share for email clients, and I'll bet that's a conservative estimate.

So they figure why not make everyone do things their way.

My jaw was literally on the floor when I heard about this last month. The web standards blogs have been exploding on this issue, Microsoft really pissed off alot of people with this move. Figure about 6 years for this to correct it's self.

[nixpayn]

Figure about 6 years for this to correct it's self.

i dont get how this came out with no warning at all, no discussion or involvement in the community.

i generally avoid taking a stance on the mac vs pc vs apple vs microsoft vs open source vs everything debates, but to me going and changing something that is a well established standard, where business pratices all of a sudden change, could happen with no warning really does push that bullying persona.

it just occured to me how many automated messages go out via email, and a lot of those emails are templated designs - things like newsletters which are generated through content management tools by non-programmers, auto-replies when things are submitted.. there are a million and one uses for templated system generated emails... of which im sure no small number use some sort of nice css formatting that is no longer available, thereby breaking all of these tools.

and i think 85% is definatly a conservative estimate at best - however - for home users, since they took out the ability to communicate with hotmail (which is total BS since outlook express can still do it - they want you to go to hotmail and click those banner ads) - i think a few less home users are using OE and probably existing totally on webmail.

but for stats with 'whos using what system based email client' im pretty sure its sitting at 95%+ since it comes with the OS and Office. I mean.. when was the last time an IT guy installed Eudora on someones box :)

[Craig B]

Do you think it's at all a response to Apple's email templates (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/mail.html) they touted as being part of the new Leopard? I would imagine that those templates would not come through looking correct in any PC running Office 2007's outlook program? Or am I just being a conspiracy nut job? Or is it a moot point because most likely it wouldn't integrate properly with any version of outlook and that it would only work for other people running Apple's mail program?

[nixpayn]

Do you think it's at all a response to Apple's email templates (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/mail.html) they touted as being part of the new Leopard? I

i'd like to say yes :P but it looks like those emails would still work in outlook, it doesnt look like anything in those emails would break under the new outlook. i would imagine the header graphics would just render as images. all the live text is still on white / solid backgrounds.