Microsoft is defending itself against the complaints and is sticking to its plans to use the Word rendering engine in its mail client for the 2010 edition.
A campaign was started after many Outlook users protested that Microsoft is once again using Word to render HTML emails in their upcoming Office 2010 software. The campaign website Fixoutlook.org is being supported by the Email Standards Project. The campaign has more than 19,000 participants.
Microsoft has first started using Word to render the HTML content in Outlook with its 2007 release.
William Kennedy, corporate vice-president for Office communications and forms at Microsoft, confirmed in a blog post that Microsoft plans to continue using Word as its HTML rendering engine in Outlook 2010.
Kennedy added: “Word has always done a great job of displaying the HTML which is commonly found in e-mails around the world. For e-mail viewing, Word also provides security benefits that are not available in a browser. Word cannot run web script or other active content that may threaten the security and safety of our customers.”
Kennedy added further: “There is no widely-recognised consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability.
He commented that the ‘Email Standards Project’ does not represent a sanctioned standard or an industry consensus in this area. Should such a consensus arise, we will of course work with other e-mail vendors to provide rich support in our products.”
