The fine folks over at http://fixoutlook.org/ are reporting that once again Microsoft is planning on using MS Word as a rendering engine for Outlook 2010. This continues a practice that started with Outlook 2007 to no end of headaches.

The idea is actually based in a somewhat reasonable-and yet entirely unthought-premise. Because Outlook composes emails using Word, MS wants them to display exactly as they were written when the recipient opens them. There are just a few problems:

• Every other email client in the world uses standard HTML to display “rich text” messages. So, if your recipient uses any email program other than Outlook, such as Gmail, AOL, Apple’s Mail.app, Mozilla Thunderbird, Evolution, etc., they’re going to receive messed-up emails from Outlook.
• HTML is a standard, meaning every web browser obeys it. MS Word is not. HTML is highly developed for quick and beautiful layouts. MS Word is not.
• When Outlook 2007 came out and started doing this, all the nice email templates and designs we had been using (I do email marketing as part of my job) broke in Outlook 2007. It’s a royal pain in the butt to make emails display even acceptably in Outlook 2007, whereas those same emails look great to every other email client in the world.
• Can I say it again? Everyone else plays by the same HTML rules so that content can be easily and simply exchanged between differing programs. Microsoft seems to think they’re above the rules. Get with it, Microsoft!

I propose a simple solution. Currently, most email programs send multipart emails, which actually include HTML for graphical content email clients, and also a separate text-only email for clients that only display text. Microsoft, all you have to do is send a third so-called “MIME type” with Outlook Content. Make Outlook default to display the Outlook MIME type with your stupid MS Word rendering engine if it’s present, and if it’s not present, to display the email using the (gasp) Internet Explorer rendering engine. IE8 is finally starting to come around, but frankly we’d be happy even with the IE6 engine over and above this ridiculous Word stuff.

This way, everyone is happy. MS Outlook can continue sending and receiving their stupid Word-documents-disguised-as-”HTML”, and Outlook users can still enjoy receiving and displaying the beauty of well-written standard HTML emails that everyone else in the world sends them.

As for you… go spread the word and RT from http://fixoutlook.org/