 |
What's Outlook 2007?
As a part of its new Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft is also releasing its Office Suite with updated versions of Word, Excel, and Outlook (to name a few).
Why the fuss?
Instead of designing Outlook 2007 around Internet Explorer (a browser that's meant to translate HTML), Microsoft decided to base Outlook 2007's HTML rendering engine on Word (a word processor that does, you know, wordy stuff). It's a bit backward, we admit, and because of that change, several popular elements of HTML email design aren't supported for the time being.
What are people saying?
There's quite a bit of talk about what's not supported, with some folks claiming that email's technology has taken a step (or three) backward. Microsoft has responded to the negative feedback with a more detailed explanation and FAQ. The conversation is covered nicely in these blogs from ZDNet and Wired.
|
|
|
Every email program out there interprets HTML code a little bit differently, and Outlook 2007 is no exception. In fact, there are a handful of specific limitations with this new version of Outlook, but those limitations won't have much bearing on campaigns created with Emma's click-and-build layouts, except in a handful of situations. And to make good news even better, there are things you can do in those situations to optimize your campaigns for recipients using Outlook 2007.
In this guide, we'll cover the two most common ways that Outlook 2007's way of interpreting HTML could affect your Emma emails. (If you're designing your own HTML code, you'll also want to read our advanced tips page.)
The average campaign will look just the same.
For example, here's a comparison of how our last Ask Emma campaign
would appear in Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Mac Mail, and Yahoo:
Occasionally, we use background images behind your designed stationery header, allowing your header to stretch to match the width of your content. In Outlook 2007, those background images won't show at all. So, if you create an extra-wide campaign, your Outlook 2007 viewers might see something like this:
A new addition to our proof tab will tell you when your campaign dimensions have exceeded what they were designed to be. Common culprits that stretch campaigns are horizontal rules longer than 550 pixels, and several large images side-by-side. For more on troubleshooting wide campaigns, read this page of our help section.
If you're fond of adding animated GIFs to your campaigns, keep in mind that Outlook 2007 users won't see the additional layers of the GIF file. Instead, they'll just see the first frame of your GIF as a typical picture.
-> For more on Outlook 2007, continue on to
our advanced
tips...
|
