I am fed up.

[OneMouseRevolt]

I am so fed up with Outlook 2007!

The fact that Microsoft, being the so-called leader, thought that it was
acceptable to push Outlook 2007, with Word as it's rendering agent, on us
just highlights the problem that this company has had it's whole life.
Microsoft does not fully assess the possible issues with their software
before they foist it on the blinded masses.

I understand the concept behind the change, to use Word to create and
display email messages, makes sense. But to wait until you have full CSS and
HTML standards comliance may have been a good idea! What we are stuck with
now is an email program which is incapable of handling HTML with CSS. No
background images, what the heck were they thinking?!?

You have successfully set the email designers back five to ten years. If
you truly appreciate my input as it says in your Terms of Use, you will do
something about this situation now.

It is sad that you actually need to provide this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338200.aspx

I have been fighting with code for years, the fight has been with getting
code to work properly in Internet Explorer and now with Outlook as well. Get
a clue people. We are not the masses that you can manipulate, we are people
with a free will. And if you keep ticking us off, we may all make the switch
to a better OS and fix the problem ourselves, by removing you from the
picture.

If you are a PC, you can now count us on opposing sides.

OneMouseRevolt

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...d0d424849&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general

 

[Gordon]

I am so fed up with Outlook 2007!

You have successfully set the email designers back five to ten years.

Email is a TEXT medium. I for one do NOT want fancy images, graphics and all
the bells and whistles in MY inbox thank you very much.....

 

[OneMouseRevolt]

Gordon,

That is why they made a "Text Only" setting in email programs. So that
people like you can get what you want, while the rest of the world can get
the version they want or in this case have requested.

OneMouseRevolt

 

[VanguardLH]

I am so fed up with Outlook 2007!

The fact that Microsoft, being the so-called leader, thought that it was
acceptable to push Outlook 2007, with Word as it's rendering agent, on us
just highlights the problem that this company has had it's whole life.
Microsoft does not fully assess the possible issues with their software
before they foist it on the blinded masses.

I understand the concept behind the change, to use Word to create and
display email messages, makes sense. But to wait until you have full CSS and
HTML standards comliance may have been a good idea! What we are stuck with
now is an email program which is incapable of handling HTML with CSS. No
background images, what the heck were they thinking?!?

You have successfully set the email designers back five to ten years. If
you truly appreciate my input as it says in your Terms of Use, you will do
something about this situation now.

It is sad that you actually need to provide this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338200.aspx

I have been fighting with code for years, the fight has been with getting
code to work properly in Internet Explorer and now with Outlook as well. Get
a clue people. We are not the masses that you can manipulate, we are people
with a free will. And if you keep ticking us off, we may all make the switch
to a better OS and fix the problem ourselves, by removing you from the
picture.

If you are a PC, you can now count us on opposing sides.

OneMouseRevolt

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...d0d424849&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general

Why do you think any e-mail client should have the full functionality of
a web browser? If it did, we wouldn't need separate web browsers. We'd
just view the URL inside a custom window for the e-mail client. E-mail
is supposed to involve actual communication with the recipient, not a
bunch of crap fluff typical of a web site.

If you want to compose an e-mail that equates to a web site, create the
web site and point at it with a URL in your e-mail. Otherwise, use an
HTML editor to compose web site oriented e-mails and then hope that
maybe 2% of your recipients will extract the HTML source to save into a
file to then view in a web browser. No e-mail client can display the
same content of an HTML web page as will a web browser (well, some try
but then you run into security issues regarding HTML tricks that could
be employed via e-mails).

 

[VanguardLH]

Gordon,

That is why they made a "Text Only" setting in email programs. So that
people like you can get what you want, while the rest of the world can get
the version they want or in this case have requested.

OneMouseRevolt

That only works if the sender actually composes an e-mail with a
plain-text MIME part and an HTML MIME part. If the sender composes
their message with only HTML encoding (as the raw source or with only an
HTML MIME part) then what the plain-text reading recipient sees is all
that HTML crap code. For a long time, anyone sending with Hotmail sent
only the HTML MIME part. There was no text MIME part. Whether the
recipient could read it depended on whether or not they used an e-mail
client that would render HTML-formatted e-mails in plain-text mode;
otherwise, they got the joy of reading a bunch of HTML formatting.
Microsoft fixed that screwup a couple years ago. You'll have to send a
test e-mail when using Word as the editor in Outlook to then receive
that test e-mail in a different client (so you can actually see the raw
source of the e-mail rather than trying to extract it out of Outlook's
database records), like in OE or Windows Live Mail. Check if there are
both text/plain and text/html MIME parts in your test e-mail.

Also remember that when sending an HTML-formatted e-mail, you double its
size. One copy of your message is in the text MIME part and another
copy (which is larger due to HTML formatting) in the HTML MIME part.
Not a big deal if you're sending a 5KB message that bloats to 11KB to
include both MIME parts but becomes more important when you send a
book-size e-mail to someone (attachments don't get doubled). While you
may have the convenience of an always-on broadband Internet connection,
a vast number of users still use dial-up. The bigger your e-mail, the
longer it takes to download. With everyone supporting the same rude
behavior that what works okay for them is okay for everyone else so a
recipient gets all HTML-formatted e-mails that take longer to download,
it can take awhile on dial-up to get all those bloated e-mails that
contain no additional content in the HTML MIME part than in the text
MIME part. In fact, most HTML-formatted e-mails make no use of styles
(bold, italics, colors) or formatting (indentation, tables, centering)
so there was absolutely no need to use HTML - but that is the default
format configured in their e-mail client and they're too lazy to change
to text mode when nothing in their e-mail needs HTML.

So why are you so surprised that Microsoft went with Word as the e-mail
editor in OL2007? They been pushing Word as the e-mail editor for a lot
longer. It probably is the default in prior versions. Word is known
for bloating an HTML e-mail not only due to overuse of HTML code but
also because it adds directives that only Word knows how to understand
(i.e., you not only send an HTML encoded e-mail but it also is a
Word-encoded e-mail). Someday send a test e-mail to yourself where you
used Word as the e-mail editor. You'll find directives embedded in the
HTML code that target Word for decoding. So not only are you bloating
your e-mails (that usually don't need any HTML features) by using HTML
but using Word bloats them further.

Most users these days should be using an e-mail client that can render
HTML-formatted e-mails into plain text versions even if the text/plain
MIME part is missing (i.e., convert the HTML MIME part into plain text).
Most e-mails are small in size so the bloat from more than doubling
their size by using HTML (and even more when using Word) is still small
enough that the download time isn't much longer, even for dial-up users.
Just remember that the superfluous doubling of the size of your e-mails
is being repeated by the horde of other e-mail users which means more
traffic for the servers to handle and to shove through the pipes. I'm
sure the joker that tosses his empty cigarette pack out his car window
along with every cigarette butt also qualifies his pollution as being
insignificant.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I am so fed up with Outlook 2007!

The fact that Microsoft, being the so-called leader, thought that it was
acceptable to push Outlook 2007, with Word as it's rendering agent, on us
just highlights the problem that this company has had it's whole life.
Microsoft does not fully assess the possible issues with their software
before they foist it on the blinded masses.

Then use a tool that does the job you want. No one (not even Microsoft)
forces you to use Outlook and Word.

 

[OneMouseRevolt]

VangardLH and Brian,

1) I know how to develop email, I also know how to keep them small and make
a text version.

2) I do not expect full web capabilities. But being able to use background
images allows me to make a newsletter look nicer and keep it smaller at the
same time, since I can use text over the image. Right now, I am forced to
use an image with text, which is not as small, nor as clean and every time I
have a change it has to be done in PhotoShop.

3) Use Word as an HTML editor, OMG no. Microsoft FrontPage and Word both
suck at that. I will not use an editor which writes a ton of excess code and
rewrites my small, concise and compatible code.

4) You are right, I can and do use another email program. A much more
standards compliant email program. However, I am still stuck with making
things compatible with Outlook. So my only recourse is to make a point with
MicroSoft regarding all the extra man hours that all of the email designers
and coders have to spend per year trying to make an email that works with
Outlook 2007, as well as the extra size involved in the files due to the fact
that we cannot use background images.

Thank you for inadvertantly making my point for me.

OneMouseRevolt

 

[William Lefkovics]

Yup, it sucks. (I am not among those who are compelled to limit what an
application can or can't do) But don't underestimate Microsoft's
assessment prior to making this change. It wasn't pushed on anyone.
And they had an extensive beta and the issue has been hashed out and
whined about for almost two years:

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/rendering.htm
http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2007/01/outlook-2007-and-html-email-design.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/01/10/microsoft-breaks-html-email-rendering-in-outlook/
http://www.developertutorials.com/t...ml-emails-with-outlook-2007-070130/page1.html
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2007/01/microsoft_takes_email_design_b.html

William

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