The Outlook 2007 reading pane looks the same as the one in previous versions but it’s actually quite different and safer.
The Outlook 2007 reading pane looks the same as the one in previous versions but it’s actually quite different and safer. There has always been a concern that a malicious email could contain code which would run on your computer as soon as it appeared in the preview/reading pane.
In previous versions of Outlook, the preview/reading pane used Internet Explorer technology to display messages within Outlook. That meant any vulnerability in Internet Explorer could be exploited via Outlook.
In Outlook 2007, the Office developers has dumped the IE technology and instead use Word 2007 technology to display messages. The new system limits the HTML code and tags that will be recognized by Outlook 2007 – anything else is just ignored.
That’s the safer choice but there’s a downside, HTML emails may not display the way the sender intended.
For Outlook 2003 and versions before there was some consistency in how HTML messages appeared, but that may not apply in Outlook 2007. For most people this won’t be a problem, most HTML emails used standard formatting tags (bold, center etc) and will look much the same. If you use Outlook with Word as the email editor then presumably it has a better chance of looking the way you intended.
However more complex formatting could show up looking very different to what was intended. There is also the problem of compatibility – Outlook 2007 adds another possible variation of display behavior.
This is mostly an issue for senders of large numbers of HTML emails but is worth keeping in mind. If Outlook 2007 displays a message in a strange way it might be the change in the display system.
