As I recall, there was quite a hubbub about the regression in Outlook 2007, at least among those who cared. See here:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2396/the-truth-behind-the-outlook-2007-change-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
I think the Outlook 2007 regression was one of the key events that led the Freshview guys to launch the E-mail Standards Project.

Youll notice the above linked post ends in earnest optimism, calling for everyone to submit complaints to Microsoft since theyve promised theyll listen. Of course, that promise was relayed by Molly Holzschlag, who maybe had closer ties to the IE team than the Office team. Anyway, this gives context to why people were so upset to find that nothing was changing in Outlook 2010.

More historical details:
Pre-Outlook 2007, IE was used to view HTML e-mails in Outlook. Word was used to compose HTML e-mails. (according to a href=http://www.molly.com/2007/01/18/what-happened-with-html-and-css-in-outlook-2007/ rel=nofollowMolly/a). Maybe one reason some people want Word pulled is that they see it as putting IE back, rather than doing something new. Though I doubt its actually that simple!

Back in 2007, the story from Microsoft (via Molly) on the reason for switching to Word for viewing HTML e-mails was that customers were unhappy when the e-mails they had composed (in Word), looked different (rendered by IE). I can see how the short-term cheaper (engineering-time-wise) solution may have been to render using Word, but to many people that seemed like propagating an error rather than fixing it! This history of reasoning on the Office teams part probably plays into the call to fix the Word *compose* engine, not just the render engine.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful and open-minded discussion of these sensitive issues, and for trying to help make things better.

The benefits of the rendering supporting standards are obvious, but if an editor *produces* standards compliant HTML it will then render correctly for any recipients not using Outlook. That’s a win for both senders and receivers.

Totally agree with you here, but my point is that it seemed contradictory to specify that the rendering was sub-par but then to later say specifically you were unhappy with the quality of the markup produced. They’re related, certainly, and both requests are valid, but from my perspective the overall goal was muddied by the change in messaging.

Our message has never been that Outlook shouldn’t use Word to render emails.

Understood. My point is that at some point, the conversation shifted, at least in the Twitter-sphere/blogosphere. I started hearing people cry, “Stop using Word for rendering!” not “Outlook should render email properly.” Obviously I can’t (and don’t) hold you responsible for the change in perception once things hit the masses and got “twisted,” but my point is that if public opinion is that Word for rendering is the culprit, then there’s no real solution to address *public opinion* except removing Word completely.

What the screenshot can’t show you is what happens when you click on this bar.

Yeah, it’s worse than I imagined. For what it’s worth, I filed a separate bug on the fact that we’re not obeying your browser preferences. I’ll be posting a follow-up post shortly with a little more detail.

Thanks for the links – I updated the post to point to them.

@Damien:

Good point. It’s worth noting, though, that this behavior actually regressed in Outlook 2007. I think a lot of people are getting the idea that this is somehow a 2010-only thing. That’s not to say the criticism isn’t valid and warranted, but I do, in many ways, wish that it had come last release. (Maybe it did and was ignored then, though.)

Unfortunately there is a tendency to only look one release back, especially on large multi-year projects like Office, when using historical behavior to help inform decisions about what to fix. That hurts the likelihood of broad change in this case, which sucks.

@Russell:

It’s always an issue of engineering cost. Someone has to go and implement that behavior somehow. I can’t think of a technical reason.

@Dan, @Alex:

I agree, the trade-off seems incorrect, but my point is that it’s not always clear the risks associated with each approach, and we simply don’t know what went into the decision. I would hope that if the Outlook team chooses to address this that they wouldn’t invest a bunch of time making Word into a perfect HTML renderer. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets fixed “halfway” by addressing some of the rendering issues in Word directly. That might still be cheaper than integrating IE (though I really hope this isn’t the case).

@Mike:

I didn’t like the official response either, which is one reason I wrote this post. That, and I wanted to address Zeldman’s “cost” assumptions since I think he missed the mark there.

I don’t agree with your description of Microsoft culture, but I can see how the Outlook response would give you the impressions you appear to have, and I’m not going to spend time here trying to change your mind.

It’s aggravating, because it turns out that even if developers join forces and use social networks to speak out, Microsoft feels that it’s fine to ignore them, because they are not the customers. It means to me personally that the ones that cause my very real experienced frustration of developing for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook 2007, think it’s ok not to take me seriously. It’s like a slap in the face.

It’s sad because apparently, there is a culture in one of the biggest software companies in the world where management feels it’s ok to twist some issue until the message fits the marketing and then shut down the venue of discourse. This is again very disingenuous of Microsoft. And I love software development, and so I’m sad that managers in this industry (Microsoft being such a large entity in this industry) feel that they can subvert the developers’ opinions. Even while their own career is built on the product that is actually built by those developers. It is my opinion that those managers and PR employees should very ashamed and guilty about their acts. If not, they don’t have their heart in the right place, and should consider working in the tobacco industry or becoming lobbyists for oil companies.

Notice the EXTREME use of corporate speak at the end of the comments on the Outlook blog. They flat out say that they read them and that they are not going to publish any more comments? Why? WHY? I’ll let you think about that yourself, it’s the weekend, so you have two days to think about the company that you work for, that is built on developers, developers, developers, where management shuts down comments BY developers on an MSDN blog FOR developers, because they don’t like the message.

Me personally, I would have to much pride in my work as a developer to work in such an environment.

And finally, let me quote you on this:

“but at this point, even if all the rendering issues are fixed, many people will still be pissed because Word is used to render the email.”

Let’s wait until they fix ANY rendering issues ok? Because there are simply too many to fix. But all fixes are in IE8, so switching to IE8 would be the most efficient way to fix them for sure. Using zones, securoty cannot and should not be a problem. THEN you can back your claim about the ‘many’ people that would ’still be pissed’ (I wonder how you are going to back that claim). Because as I see it, roughly 80% of commenters on the MSDN blog complained that they had issues with the rendering. So I can do nothing but conclude that NOT many people would remain pissed when rendering issues are fixed. Quite how you could get to your conclusion baffles me.

Have fun working in an environment that does not value the opinions of those that created the very company you work for!

It seems logical that the “engineering cost” to bring the current word rendering engine up to the capabilities of the IE8 engine would be greater then the “engineering cost” of integrating the existing IE8 engine.

Based on that one could quite easily come to the conclusion that since they have not opted to use IE8s engine, as it would cost to much (engineering cost), then it would also cost to much to bring Words rendering engine up to par as well.

The next logical step is to think that they do not intend to improve the Word Rendering engine (as is supported by the fact that there is also no change since 2007).

Does it not make sense from that point for developers to to ask for them to take path with the lowest “engineering cost” that will also provide standard complaint rendering of HTML in email?

I argue that the number of emails received in Outlook that didn’t originate in Outlook is relatively small.

This is a silly assumption. I work with all sorts of institutions (banks, governments, non-profits, businesses): they all receive email from the “outside” in varying numbers.

Also, many of them are using an email newsletter app to send email internal newsletters to their own staff. In the bigger orgs, we’re talking about thousand of legitimate emails being sent internally that look like garbage when received by Outlook 2007.