Catasrophemail?

Some corners of the web-design community are up in arms about a recent Microsoft decision to dump the current HTML email engine for Outlook 2007, instead adopting an outdated and flawed engine based on, no, really, Microsoft Word. What’s on the chopping block? Consistent support for background images and colors, nice margins, and overall control of object placement and spacing inside emails. If the rumors are all true, a lot of emails are going to start looking bad, and a lot of email designers are going to be tearing out their hair.

More after the jump:

While I’m up for a little Microsoft grumbling anytime, I’m actually quite dismayed that the company with the greatest power for moving the web forward is crippling thousands upon thousands of email newsletters, e-cards, appeals, and action alerts. If these changes go through, a lot of non-profits and businesses will start seeing seeing their pretty email designs turn to soup by the time they reach the user.

Why does this matter to you? Well, if you’re sending emails during the day, they’re going to overwhelmingly be received in Outlook. This could mean that the nice big graphics, floating buttons, and colorful headlines you paid developers to put together all go away, leaving a scrolling string of links and blah text.

Of course, there’s a way to avoid these compatibility problems, and it’s the way clever email designers have been avoiding HTML inconsistencies for years. By using the generally-disregarded “table” method of coding emails, layouts are locked, images are where they should be, and margins work correctly. By mixing CSS and some tricky tables (obligatory plug: like we do here at Silas), you can produce emails that layout perfectly in almost any e-mail reader, but still display the subtle details and professional touches on graphic-rich e-mail programs like Thunderbird.

The always-vigilant Campaign Monitor has the full scoop with comparison screenshots, a glimpse of the future, and a teaspoon of snark thrown in.