Comments on: Microsoft defends Outlook HTML decision

A Twitter campaign to overturn Microsoft's choice to use Word to render HTML in Outlook has caught the software giant's attention, but don't expect changes.

[JustMe222]

After many years of trying different software to replace Outlook, I finally took the leap to Zimbra desktop and am very happy I did. Sure there are some things that don't work the way I'm used too and has some minor annoyances, but for the most part it's been a much better transition than I ever imagined.

Had to use a few tricks to port my e-mail from Outlook, still don't know why a tool isn't included? That will really hurt adoption.

[TSkeptic]

Outlook is a dreadful mail client in so many different ways. Support for IMAP is crude. Support for HTML is crude. It's background process needs to be forcefully shutdown when restarting the computer. Searching for information is harder than it should be.

It is a great example of how doing too much in one program leads to it being average (at best) in everything, but excellent at nothing.

[Mr. Dee]

If Outlook is that dreadful, what would you say about Lotus Notes?

[dhavleak]

@ TSkeptic

1. Outlook is primarily intended as a MAPI client -- if you need IMAP support you're using the wrong application.
2. HTML support is explained above. 'nuff said.
3. What background process? I've never heard of anyone having to manually shut down anything. You know what they say about anecdotal evidence...
4. Searching for information could not possibly be any easier. Enter your search term in the search box and hit enter. I fail to see the problem.

A legit complaint against outlook would be intermittent performance issues when you have a very large mailbox (my company has 100GB mailboxes). But it looks like MS is working hard on that so it might not be a problem much longer.

[Jack K1]

I'm not sure what Lotus Notes has to do with this. In fact, I'm not sure how important pretty e-mails are to the world in general. Most office communications are ad-hoc text and don't require dressing up. Who would want to waste the time or bandwidth - except someone advertising that they had nothing better to do with their time.

Lotus Notes supports ad-hoc text e-mails as well as any other mail client. On the other hand, Lotus Notes also supports the rapid development of workflows and knowledge exchanges (in addition to the canned workflows already supported by Outlook: calendering, scheduling, and very rudimentary task management features).

However, I've found that the benefits gained from rapidly automating workflows and the self-generated productivity metrics that go with them are often lost on those who have never experienced them first hand. It's like trying to explain color to someone who has been blind from birth. With Lotus Notes, I can visualize workflows, spot stoppages, measure productivity, and manage with facts all without requiring my employees to fill out any extra forms beyond the work they already perform. Simply by performing their work in Lotus Notes, I'm able to capture and use all this information. Indeed, the system even sends me notifications when problems arise. Outlook just can't do those sorts of things as quickly and easily as Notes can, and I've never seen an organization try.

[JunkSiu]

Outlook IMAP is crude? Try upload email from a non-imap account to an imap account with other apps?

I can drop and drop the whole folder tree in outlook, go try Thunderbird!!

I am IT contractor and that's one of my common routine when client switching gear or back end platform.

[paulej]

@Jack K1, Mr. Dee's point is that Lotus Notes sucks worse, I think. At least, that's my opinion of Notes.

I'm fairly pleased with Outlook, to be honest. I use the Cyrus IMAP server on the backend and Outlook on the desktop. I have nearly 200,000 emails on that server and Outlook handles it quite well.

And, while I'm not a master at sending beautiful email messages, one of the product managers I work with sends some really nice looking emails with Outlook. So, Outlook can render some nice-looking messages.

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "@Jack K1, Mr. Dee's point is that Lotus Notes sucks worse, I think. At least, that's my opinion of Notes...."

Although it has not yet been tried....; but, the assumption is - if its Lotus Notes; then, there should be seamless integration with Lotus Symphony; so, from an economical as well as an interoperability standpoint - why open one's pocket book to purchase a product (Microsoft Outlook that will lock you in eternally) when you can get the "Open Standard" Lotus Symphony for free. And, one of the reasons why "Companies (are) Choosing Lotus Collaboration (including Lotus Notes) to Work Smarter and Lower Costs.

See attached link:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27654.wss

Cool!

[Vegaman_Dan]

I met this waitress whose third uncle in law is a car wash attendant in Cupertino, Califnornia who went to school with Michael Jackson's barber who once had trouble opening up a spam message in Outlook. That means that Outlook sucks in any and all ways because of that instance.

I'm not about to do anything as silly as try the application and base my opinion upon my own experiences- I'm much happier letting other people make up my opinions for me.

....

That's what I see frequently from people who do not like this or that product but don't actually USE the product they are complaining about.

[webdev511]

Searching for information is harder than it should be? If the Outlook search engine is turned off I would agree with you 100%.
Solution? Turn on the Outlook search engine.

I do agree that the HTML rendering engine in Office should be far more standards compliant than it is now.

[Squashman2]

For those of you who think Lotus Notes "sucks", then you really don't know what it is capable of. Our company could never in a million years do in Outlook what we do in Lotus Notes.

[happyguy77]

> It's background process needs to be forcefully shutdown when restarting the computer.

The outlook process does hang when there's a misbehaving add-in installed. What happens is the add-in refuses to shutdown, meanwhile the outlook process is sitting there waiting.. On the machines I've fixed with that issue it's often iTunes (Yes, iTunes does install an add-in into Outlook even though its installer says nothing about that). I'd blame the add-in's designers, not Outlook.

[FreddieT]

It does not matter to me in the end. I always disable HTML in my mail client. If I were to use Outlook 2010, I would do that as soon as I install it. HTML mail is evil!

[solitare_pax]

Agreed - every time I try to print out an e-mail I want to save or pass on in the office with fluttering butterflies and romping kittens, the printer chokes.

So please - stick with ASCII art! :)

[Vegaman_Dan]

I have always detested HTML encoded email. I don't want rich graphics or other junk in the way of just simple text. It's not meant to be a highly polished document- it's email for goodness sake.

HTML is always turned off for me.

[Mr. Dee]

So 19,000 users said no on Twitter. What about the other 499,981,000 million users of Outlook world wide. Don't they have a say too?

[Vegaman_Dan]

No. They couldn't be reached for comment as they were too busy using the product to complain.

[Mr. Dee]

So I guess it was just another useless example of how people waste time on Twitter then. If I were the employer of those 19,000 people I would slap them with some good old 'web sense'. 'No Twitter during work hours'.

[magicmaster]

Basically your conclusion is illigical. You may conclude that 19000 users disagree with Microsoft's decision, but you can't conclude based on Twitter's stats that the rest of users agree with Microsoft, unless every outlook user is surveyed and their opinions gathered.

[kelmon]

Well, I don't use Twitter and I hadn't heard of this campaign. However, if I had then I'd have voiced my agreement with them. So, I guess that is 19,001 and counting...

[TV James]

The 19,000 of us who said no aren't Outlook users, if we can help it. We are Email Marketing professionals charged by our employers to send you relevant, nice looking emails that you've signed up to receive, to encourage you to spend money with our organizations. We are the car manufacturers who have seen the autobahn (HTML compliance) but are still forced to build for the muddy dirt roads (Outlook with the Word rendering engine.)

(The spammers - the ones who don't care about relevancy, about whether or not you've signed up, etc., etc. are probably far less likely to care how well their emails render.)

[ppgreat]

Yet another reason to pursue alternatives. As if the licensing costs of running Exchange Server and Outlook weren't enough.

[monkeyfun14]

Find a good alternative so far none have come close.

[Vegaman_Dan]

The notion of 'build a better mousetrap' comes to mind. Instead of complaining about it, how about you start inventing that better mousetrap/email client?

[gggg sssss]

well once upon a time there was groupwise. Glad to see that turd dead

[Seaspray0]

@ppgreat. What alternatives? You didn't give any. There's a reason for that.

[jaxstephens]

I've used and supported Exchange/Outlook, Lotus Notes, and GroupWise in various organizations over the years. While Outlook is far from perfect, it's a shiny diamond compared to the shear mediocrity that is the bastard user interface of Notes and the dubious Novell and NetWare heritage of GroupWise. Notes in particular ought to be taken out back and shot dead; it's really *that* dreadful to use the program.

[kojacked]

This feels like the "old" Microsoft. At least they could make an effort to upgrade Word's HTML rendering to support some modern HTML standards. That aside they could at least use IE for displaying messages rather than Word. They would still offer the "best" editor for email just not task it to display received messages.

This was a dumb choice and the product manager should be fired.

[JoeF2]

Email is a TEXT medium.
Anybody with a clue has HTML viewing disabled in his email program setup.
Pretty much the only people who send email with "rich" formatting, i.e., HTML, are spammers. Open an HTML email, and you can be sure that the spammer who sent it knows that your email address is good, and you can expect tons more spam.

[NewsReader_]

Amen.

HTML support will do more harm than good. If you do not like it, create a web site, write your email on the site, then send a link to the site.

[aMUSICsite]

Who made to rule that email is just for text messages.

You should be given the option of text only versions.

But I see no reason why I should not use this way of messaging to send someone say an embedded video.

For corporate networks you would just block these functions if not wanted or only allow certain people to send them internally.

Just like IE6 held back websites because of business use Outlook is in danger of doing the same for email. Has MS not learnt from the IE market share drop that this is bad for them

[medezark]

Which is probably why the person originating the complaint originated it. They want their automatically generated, script infected spam e-mails to "work" on outlook.

Forget the visual examples shown above. They used something other than outlook to create/format the message. If they had used outlooks tools to format the message it would look the same regardless of Web or Outlook rendering of the message.

[santuccie]

JoeF2 is right; that's why I use MailWasher Pro. It has a text-only preview panel, allowing me to see a suspicious message in case I can't determine from sender and subject alone that I didn't solicit their correspondence. Once I've verified that the message is indeed spam, I bounce it. Sometimes the spammer won't see the delivery failure notice, as they use spoofed or made-up e-mail addresses. But if I catch them as soon as the message arrives, chances are that they're still in the process of blasting, and will see it before they pull out and take my address off their list (where it never should have been to begin with).

[JoeF2]

"Who made to rule that email is just for text messages. "

The Internet governing body...
It is called RFCs.
If you want to send videos, use an attachment.
But why should somebody who doesn't want it pay for the transmission of bloated HTML, and for the storage of the bloated HTML?
Only spammers love this crap.

[Police_States_of_America]

if you dont like lockin then dont use the products. does anyone really think some twittering is going to help? how about you vote with you dollar

[thenet411]

I wonder if using IE's rendering engine costs MS more money in its licensed technology? In addition, using IE's rendering engine in Outlook would likely run afoul of the anti-trust settlements that cry about IE's OS integration.

Using another HTML rendering engine in Outlook is a possible solution but a headache for the programmers to maintain two different engines. Granted they do that now with Word's rendering engine but Word's engine is much lighter than what would be required to support all web standards.

[Seaspray0]

"would likely run afoul of the anti-trust settlements that cry about IE's OS integration." How? Outlook and Word are applications, not the OS.

[ewelch]

Of course Microsoft has to argue the security angle. Their OS is a security quagmire and they have to do everything they can to avoid attacks. Pathetic.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Nearly as pathetic as a person who complains about it without merit. What's your excuse?

[Seaspray0]

Of course you have absolutely no facts to back up your pathetic comment.... again.

[JoeF2]

The security angle actually is to disable HTML mail altogether. No HTML mail, no viruses and other malware (Ok, at least 90% less of that...)

[santuccie]

Vista is hardly a security quagmire, and much less Windows 7, with its new Safe Unlinking technology. OS X has been pwned with drive-by downloads three consecutive times at CanSecWest and once publicly, while Vista could only be touched through third-party software (Adobe Flash) at CanSecWest, and not at all in the wild. Three years later, and yet we still have all these stragglers who think everything Unix is inherently invincible, as if it can magically distinguish malicious software from everything else, and discretely block it (LOL). Magical thinking like that is what I would call "pathetic." Evolved minds know better.

[santuccie]

@JoeF2:

Maybe, if you're talking about Vista. But I still wouldn't be inclined to say so. I deal with Vista units 5 days a week, most of which are crawling from too many autostart applications (25 icons in the system tray, COME ON!). When a Vista machine actually is infected, it's usually not a virus, but a Trojan; and more often than not, I find LimeWire, Frostwire, or Ares on the system as well.

With XP and earlier, the biggest problem is definitely not e-mail; it's drive-by downloads. Legitimate Web sites everywhere are less secure than they ought to be, and are getting compromised with cross-site scripting attacks. Frequent visitors don't expect to be infected on a site with a green rating in McAfee SiteAdvisor. As far as e-mail goes, people are getting wiser to that. And in the case of infected attachments willingly forwarded in chain letters, many AV users are protected with matching signatures by the time they get the message.

[santuccie]

BTW, I wouldn't expect Vista to be any more vulnerable to HTML in an e-mail client than it would be in a Web browser, and there aren't any ItW drive-by downloads that work on Vista as far as I know.

I'd say HTML is not that big a problem, unless you're using dial-up and publicizing your e-mail address on the Internet. The problem IMO is that bot herders have easy access to so many vulnerable XP machines, and that they can keep control as long as the user doesn't know how to scan for rootkits. It would be nice if MSRT used a random filename with jumbled characters each time it was downloaded and run in AU, and utilized system restart to fully remove rootkits. This would help us get to the root of the problem; once bot herders are phased out, the rest of the cybercrime industry dries and withers. Of course then we'd have to prepare for a massive attack on Apple.

[JoeF2]

"I'd say HTML is not that big a problem, unless you're using dial-up and publicizing your e-mail address on the Internet."

Huh? How else would people know your email address? You give it out...
Also, spammers just use all combinations of letters.

"The problem IMO is that bot herders have easy access to so many vulnerable XP machines"

The problem is that the bot herders use spam to install bots. It may be less pronounced with Vista, but it still is a problem. And all these things can only come through HTML mail, which allows scripts. In that sense, viewing an email in HTML is about the same as going to a website. With HTML mail, the website comes to you. And since it is local then, the safeguards like in the browser are turned off.
Bottom line: HTML mail is bad.

[santuccie]

"Huh? How else would people know your email address? You give it out... Also, spammers just use all combinations of letters."
>>>>I should have added that spammers also get your address if someone you know forwards chain letters with your address visible. Anyway, I know that spammers use jumbled letters and numbers to circumvent Bayesian spam filters; that's one of the reasons why I mentioned MailWasher Pro in an above thread, another being that receipt notification can be embedded in HTML, letting the spammer know your address is active.

"The problem is that the bot herders use spam to install bots. It may be less pronounced with Vista, but it still is a problem. And all these things can only come through HTML mail, which allows scripts. In that sense, viewing an email in HTML is about the same as going to a website. With HTML mail, the website comes to you. And since it is local then, the safeguards like in the browser are turned off."
>>>>Actually, that's not true. Whether in a browser or e-mail client, in both cases you are downloading and opening files. HTML on an e-mail client probably has less of a chance to infiltrate Vista than it would through IE, as IE interacts with more of the system's core components than they do. IE adds the dangers of ActiveX, Java, and Adobe Flash; while e-mail clients add VBS. But e-mail clients tend to block everything but HTML by default. And either way, you still have DEP and ASLR to deal with, not to mention UAC if it is turned on (as it is on most systems).

I'm not saying HTML in e-mail isn't a problem; I'm saying it is a problem that is infinitesimally small in comparison with Web HTML. You're much more secure using an e-mail client than you would be using Webmail, because HTML is the only thing that displays unrestrictedly (unless flagged by a spam filter). Drive-by downloads are not the only method of bot harvesting, but they are by far the fastest. Remember how it used to be before 2004? Back then, not very many criminal hackers knew how to attack a system remotely. And before drive-by downloads, it was mostly exploits on popular third-party apps that listened on the firewall.

Now, everybody in Russia and China knows how to make a drive-by download for Windows. That's why we have thousands of variants of polymorphic rootkits coming out each day, when the total number of samples over the course of 20 years had been somewhere around 250,000 up until the end of 2006 (then came the Storm worm). It's because of drive-by downloads that Conficker was able to infect over 3 million machines in two weeks, and who knows how many have been hit by Gumblar?

Cybercrime is more profitable today than drug trafficking, and has been since '04. If Windows 7 proves to be an XP killer as is being prophesied, then the drive-by problem will begin to grind to a halt. When this happens, and if Snow Leopard's implementation of ASLR isn't enough, then Macintosh may be the next target. Bottom line: spammers use bots. You can't profit from spam unless you can get thousands of hits per day. And because people are wiser than they used to be, you have to have more power to continue to pump out millions upon millions of spam messages to cover the odds stacked against you. Spammers hire bot herders, unless they work two jobs. Hinder the bot herders' ability to herd, and the spam problem will die down with it. Social engineering will once more be all that's left, and a modern, cloud-based antivirus that leverages its install base to detect new threats can more than keep up with that.

"Bottom line: HTML mail is bad."
>>>>I actually like it, as long as it can be controlled. Secure your system, tell everyone in your contacts list to send personal messages rather than chain letters, and use MailWasher or 0Spam if the spam persists. If you're having problems, you can e-mail me from the "Questions? Comments?" hyperlink at Invincible Windows: http://invincible-windows.blogspot.com/ We will win this war.

[JoeF2]

"Whether in a browser or e-mail client, in both cases you are downloading and opening files. HTML on an e-mail client probably has less of a chance to infiltrate Vista than it would through IE, as IE interacts with more of the system's core components than they do."

Well, the email usually comes from a trusted mail server. In a corporate environment it would be in the same domain, which lowers the barriers quite a bit.
And VBScript is as bad as ActiveX, since the VBScript engine, like ActiveX, has access to everything the user has access to. Keeping things in a sandbox would have prevented a lot of headaches, but that's water under the bridge by now...
And as far as UAC is concerned, pretty much everybody turns it off because it is very intrusive. MS knows that, that's why they changed it in Win 7.

[santuccie]

"Well, the email usually comes from a trusted mail server. In a corporate environment it would be in the same domain, which lowers the barriers quite a bit."
>>>>No, it doesn't. Outlook and other e-mail clients block all formats besides HTML by default (HTML is also blocked if a spam filter flags a message). The only way for you to open these files is by manually opening an attachment.

"And VBScript is as bad as ActiveX, since the VBScript engine, like ActiveX, has access to everything the user has access to. Keeping things in a sandbox would have prevented a lot of headaches, but that's water under the bridge by now..."
>>>>So does JavaScript, which both browsers and e-mail clients support. That said, VBS still has to be opened manually in today's e-mail clients.

Just so you are aware, most e-mail infections are socially engineered, and involve opening a maliciously crafted document or executable, or clicking on a hyperlink to an infected Web page. These days, you don't just open an e-mail and BAM!, you're dead. Were this still the case, then there wouldn't be much need for attachments.

"And as far as UAC is concerned, pretty much everybody turns it off because it is very intrusive. MS knows that, that's why they changed it in Win 7."
>>>>That is incorrect. I work on Vista machines five days a week; very seldom is UAC turned off. People do it to be sure, as you see complaints about UAC in forums all over the Web. But try to gauge these figures: there are now over 1 billion PCs in active use across the globe, approximately 24.35% of which are running Windows Vista. That's 240 million machines.

Yes, people have complained. Yes, Microsoft has listened. But that's not the main issue. As I said earlier, UAC is not the most critical security component Vista has, nor will it be with Windows 7. DEP and ASLR are doing a terrific job as is, and I imagine Safe Unlinking will give us even more mileage as the bad guys try to step it up. Paranoia is by no means a bad thing when dealing with the Internet, but in this case, I think you're taking it too far.

[Pixelslave]

Why do we need advanced HTML in e-mail? How many times do we receive such e-mails that are NOT advertisements?

[TV James]

That's not the point. There are a large number of people who *want* to receive those emails, whether it's a status update from Facebook (ok, bad example, there are way too many of those) to the latest specials from Home Depot to news from World Vision. Those people have signed up to receive those emails, and at the end of the day, the people sending the emails want you to act upon those emails - go to Facebook to read the email, go to HomeDepot.com to make a purchase, go to WorldVision.org to learn more about the work they're doing or to make a contribution or perform an advocacy action. And it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a well designed email, using HTML, color, typography, images/art help move people to take action. If people have asked for these emails and these companies are paying to send these emails, and if one company puts a stranglehold on that for inexplicable reasons, well, that's why they rise up and try to get Microsoft to change.

There's absolutely no reason that email should be text-only. Any more than we should be limited to surfing the internet with Lynx or getting our news from C-FAX on a TV screen versus an anchor and live video.

[flickrz]

Remind me who is "Dave Greiner" and why is he making so much fuss about an email client. Why does people want to standardize everything? It is a microsoft product and it is their decision to implement whatever technology they feel is right for their customers. Don't like it, use other alternatives. I personally like word based outlook because it feels as if a familiar word document.

[JoeF2]

Email is about communication. And communication is only possible if there is a standard that all devices comply with. In the case of email, that standard is text only.

[talmy]

The worst thing that ever happened to e-mail was when Microsoft introduced HTML formatting.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Gmail has it as well, so Microsoft is hardly alone in this situation. :/

[saintseminole]

html formatting is fine for those who want fancy emails. But how many emails have you gotten recently that have been "gussied up"? I'll bet none. Almost all emails these days are just text, with an occasional image file throw in.

That's why most people aren't even using email "clients" anymore -- they're using their browsers for yahoo mail, hotmail, or gmail accounts.

[Seaspray0]

"But how many emails have you gotten recently that have been "gussied up"?" Almost every day.

[JoeF2]

"But how many emails have you gotten recently that have been "gussied up"?"

Well, lots. All spam...

[gefitz]

"Pretty" email might not matter. But when your own Exchange 2003 server refuses to send mail formatted by Word because of "malformed HTML", that might be an issue.

[Seaspray0]

The exchange has never had a problem with html formatting in word. That's because html formatting is basically text based instructions.

[danboarder]

As an "Email Application" Outlook should make it a PRIORITY to properly display HTML and CSS web standards-based email generated by Gmail, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc., and also send web-standards based emails that will display correctly in other Internet Email applications (not MS-Only Word DOCX format). It's as simple as that.

[JoeF2]

As an Email application Outlook should ONLY send text-based emails.
HTML-based emails are nowadays spam only. Sure, spammers want Outlook and other email clients to display their crap, but everybody else doesn't.

[sargess25]

"......Microsoft Word's relatively rudimentary technology......."

lol, an apt description of all M$ products & services, just as the adjectives "impecunious & uncouth" perfectly characterise the M$ fanboys base.

[Seaspray0]

and yet another MS hater who beleives all microsoft products are bad. You guys should make your own chat room so you can moan to each other how much you hate microsoft.

[monkeyfun14]

Get back under the bridge troll!

[curmi]

Outlook 2007+ is just plain poor. Not just at HTML, but even at multi-part MIME. Surely Windows users have a better solution available? For some examples of bad HTML and MIME in Outlook, and the issues it causes when trying to send around email, are shown in this article, for those who are interested: http://curmi.com/blog/2007/12/16/outlook-2007/

[aMUSICsite]

Have to disagree. You can unblock scripts (both on a temp or permanent option) for sites you use regularly and use them as intended.

All it does it stop all those other tracking script running in the background and like a good firewall needs a bit of configuring for your use then will work in the background.

"This might make sense a few years ago, when much of the script was bad."

Your joking right! There have never been more threats from bad scripts than there are now. It is fast becoming the No1 way into most machines. Also there is so much more tracking around too.

[curmi]

And another thought. If MS want to keep their crappy engine for authoring HTML mail, why not at least use IE for displaying incoming mail. At least that way, people using better email clients can still send around their emails and Outlook users can still view them. That seems like a fair compromise.

[Seaspray0]

Make sure you flush after posting your thoughts.

[ender21]

Do you actually have comments to make relative to the discussion rather than just adolescent insults directed at other commenters? While I've actually seen Vegaman_Dan be engaging on other threads, in Microsoft related threads you two are the self-appointed cops that misdirect away from the actual topic and focus solely on the messenger. The insults and personal attacks say more about you than they do others' venting frustrations and opinions to which they're entitled.

As athletes do with blowhard coaches, eventually they tune them out. It's clear you like being heard. Become more thoughtful and you'll be given greater deference rather than just indifference.

I do not want to be sent pretty e-mails that are oversized and contains lots of graphics. I want to get to the information as quickly as possible, then hid ?delete? or ?archive?.

However the problem with Outlook, is that the sender of the email does not know how it will be formatted even for what looks like simple formatting.

[Seaspray0]

The sender of the email can pick what format they wish to choose in outlook... tools>options>mail format tab. The format choices are plain text, rich text, and html. If you're going to post, atleast know what you're talking about.