With the new features – mainly a revamped and unique user interface – set to roll out in Microsoft Office 2007, quite a few organizations will upgrade immediately. Over time, Office 2007 will become the de facto standard in office software. This will have an impact on email marketers and their designers. Here’s why:
In the current version of Outlook, the program automatically uses the same code to display HTML emails that Internet Explorer uses to display web pages. In other words, if the email looks good in IE, it will look good in Outlook. However, with Office 2007, Microsoft has opted to use the HTML rendering engine found in Microsoft Word. This is where the problems occur.
Microsoft Word is not a web browser, and because of this, it isn’t capable of displaying certain elements of standard HTML. Some examples are:
- No support for background images (HTML or CSS)
- No support for forms
- No support for Flash, or other plugins
- No support for CSS floats and positioning
- No support for replacing bullets with images in unordered lists
- No support for animated GIFs
(list via SitePoint)
It is unclear whether these are limitations of Word that Microsoft will address in the future or if this is to create a more stable and secure environment in Outlook (is it a bug or a feature). However, what it does mean is that HTML emails will need to have a more simplistic design. Any hopes of taking advantage of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or using technologies like Flash are gone. It also means basic elements like forms will also no longer be supported.
I’m undecided whether this is a step backwards or a correction. Items like forms, Flash, and JavaScript can be used maliciously creating serious security issues. However, background images and animated GIFS are far from a problem. Either way, marketers will need to quickly adapt their campaigns or suffer the consequences of broken designs. If you are unsure whether your email will have issues, call me at (775) 332-3000 and I will be happy to look at it.
