This one flew past my radar but, back in April, Microsoft updated an existing tool for testing your HTML/CSS-based email design to determine whether or not it’s compatible with the immensely-popular Office Outlook email client.
“The Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 HTML and CSS Validator tool helps you to validate HTML and CSS grammar using some of the most popular Web developing tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Expression Web, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.”
There are two separate downloads: one validator for Microsoft design tools and one for Adobe Dreamweaver.
So, why is this necessary at all?
Well, David Greiner from CampaignMonitor.com (an exquisite, online-based email blast campaign software suite) explains in great detail why you’re forced to use an application like this in an aptly-named post on the company’s official blog: “Microsoft Takes Email Design Back 5 Years.”
Basically, effective with Outlook 2007, Microsoft decided to ditch the Internet Explorer HTML rendering engine and begin using the MSWord engine instead. Given how crippling the Word rendering engine is, I think this may have been one of Microsoft’s worst decisions in the last decade. Part of the reasoning may have been, as Greiner points out, due to “Microsoft having to separate the browser from the OS for anti-trust reasons.” Regardless, it’s caused an unfortunate amount of grief for designers around the globe and I can only hope that Microsoft finds a way around the problem with the release of the next version of Office.
(Just as a side note, Campaign Monitor is also responsible for the Email Standards Project, a noble effort to raise awareness to the necessity of Web standards for rich emails - on which I posted last month.)
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Outlook 2007 HTML and CSS Validator in Action Within Expression Web:
