Don’t get your hopes up, Office 2010 is a done deal.
A few weeks ago a curious campaign started, mostly via Twitter, to ask Microsoft is ‘fix‘ Outlook 2010.
The complaint is about the way Outlook creates HTML formatted emails, which is the way most people send emails with ‘full’ formatting like fonts, headings, images etc.
The site had an appeal to Microsoft to ‘fix’ Outlook so it sends out more standardized HTML emails with support for more CSS features instead of messages with lots of Microsoft specific code.
The Problem
For a simple paragraph in HTML you’d expect it to look like this in HTML code:
Office Watch newsletters office-watch.com
This will display the words in the default font and size defined for the ‘P’ tag.
Here’s what Outlook 2007 produces by default for the same text:
Then later …
Office Watch newsletters office-watch.com
Or, if you have Outlook’s CSS font formatting option off:
Office Watch newsletters office-watch.com
Either code is a lot more specific about the paragraph formatting. The first Outlook example uses a style sheet to centralize the formatting which can save space in longer messages.
Our personal ‘favorites’ from the clutter of Word created HTML are:
Instead of just a space or code you’ll often see
These are just simple examples and don’t show the real mess of HTML code that Microsoft Word can produce with more complex messages.
Microsoft does this because of ‘document fidelity’ where they aim to make the message or document look the same on both the senders and receivers computers. Of course that’s not always possible for many reasons (eg if the receivers computer doesn’t have the nominated font available).
Why Outlook 2010 and why now?
We’re bewildered as to why this campaign is focused on Office / Outlook 2010 – after all the same ‘feature’ was in Outlook 2007 and using Word as the email editor has been an option for many versions of Outlook before that.
There’s nothing really new in the email editing side of Outlook 2010 – at least nothing major.
While Office 2010 is ‘in development’ software as far as the public is concerned, from Microsoft’s perspective the major development changes and decisions were made long ago. For all the Redmond talk about public testing and customer feedback, in reality all the features and changes in Office 2010 were decided back in 2008.
For past versions of Office we’ve seen simple text errors in dialog boxes go unfixed through the entire beta process because, according to Microsoft, even fixing a text label can’t be done six months or more before public release. With a development system like that, there’s no chance of a major new feature or change being made even a year out from release.
Even if Microsoft wanted to ‘fix’ Outlook 2010 and make the HTML emails ‘cleaner’ (they don’t, see below), it’s too late in the development cycle for such a major change to be made.
The Fix
The problem of excessive Word HTML code is well known to anyone working on the web. Many tools have a ‘Clean Up Word HTML’ option to strip back the unwanted tags and leave something like standard HTML.
Even Microsoft’s own products like ‘Expression Web’ have features to fix Word HTML when you paste from a Word document into a web page. Word itself has a ‘Web Page – filtered’ option that strips some of the ‘clutter’.
In theory, Microsoft could add an option to the Outlook email editor (ie Word) to send less complex HTML code with messages with the trade-off being that the receiver might not see the exact formatting the sender might expect.
Why it won’t happen – Microsoft’s version
Microsoft produced a rebuttal to the campaign headed ‘The Power of Word in Outlook’.
You can read the post here but the main argument is that Outlook needs to send complex HTML in order to include in the message all the features of Word and Office that they believe their customers expect.
Frankly, we’re not so sure how many people often put charts and diagrams into emails (aside from Microsoft demonstrations). Even at Microsoft, such long or complex messages are more likely sent in email attachments. But I suppose some people must use it.
Microsoft also argues, somewhat disingenuously, that there is no official standard for HTML email. Strictly speaking they are right, but the absence of a standard doesn’t mean Microsoft could not make their HTML messages with less Redmond inspired extras.
There’s no explanation about Microsoft’s failure to support more CSS standards that would make email design a lot easier.
And since when did Microsoft care about Internet standards anyway? The company has always adopted standards in whole or part as it suited them.
Since the FixOutlook campaign got a bit more publicity, Microsoft has backed away a little from their original ‘everything is fine and dandy’ position. Now we’re seeing the usual platitudes about “always open to and interested in customer feedback” and that the campaign will “will contribute to future design considerations” – which sounds great but as long time Office Watchers (sorry but it’s true) we’ve heard similar weasel words too many times before. It’s the Microsoft development equivalent of “your call is important to us”. That’s not to say that individual Microsoft staff aren’t sincere about their work, but there are overwhelming corporate reasons that will trump any good intentions.
Why it won’t happen – our view
Microsoft Outlook will continue to produce long-winded Microsoft specific HTML because it suits Microsoft’s corporate needs and is a sales incentive to the vital corporate license market.
Organizations want their email to work nicely and have all the nifty features and formatting with little or no hassle to either staff or administrators. If Outlook produced more generic HTML formatting there’s a risk companies might save money by deploying rival email programs knowing that those other programs can read company emails just as easily. The more complex message formatting means there’s just one more incentive to buy a copy of Outlook for every computer and that means more money for Microsoft.
For individual users, Microsoft hopes that people get frustrated with rival email products that can’t handle all incoming messages properly. The widespread but company specific features of Word as an email editor act as a subtle incentive for people to reduce their email woes by buying Outlook.
Outlook no longer uses Internet Explorer to display HTML emails, as it used to. Microsoft says it did that for security reasons however another advantage to the company is that a unique HTML rendering engine in Outlook (optimized to display Word created HTML messages) reinforces the ‘advantage’ of using Microsoft products and not buying elsewhere.
Microsoft could not hope to sell a wholly proprietary email format (they tried with the RTF – Rich Text Format for emails) so instead they embraced the concept of HTML emails but add enough extras to increase pressure for companies and individuals to stick with Microsoft software. It’s just one way Microsoft uses their overwhelming market share to reinforce the ‘Microsoft advantage’ of using their products throughout.
The ‘FixOutlook’ campaign has a worthy aim but its way too late for any changes Office 2010. The public push might have some effect in decisions for the Office beyond that (aka ‘Office 15’) but we’re not holding our breath.
It would be a pity if people had an unreasonable expectation of what Microsoft is prepared or able to do for Office 2010. Beyond that, Microsoft will do what is in their corporate best interest to sell more software.
We agree with FixOutlook.org intentions however the best way to convince Microsoft is to put a case showing how the change will benefit Microsoft’s bottom line.
