Outlook 2010 use Word rendering engine to display HTML

Microsoft has confirmed that they plan to continue using the Word rendering engine to display HTML in Outlook 2010. Till outlook express 2003 they used to render ie engine for html emailers. But in 2007 outlook express, they started to render with word engine. This made the developers hard to fix the design in 2007. Outlook doesn't render HTML correctly in 2007.

It was everybody's thought that Microsoft's next version release 2010 would fix this problem. But Microsoft has confirmed that they will continue Word rendering engine to display HTML in Outlook 2010. (Please keep in mind that EVERY OTHER email client currently used anywhere uses a web browser to render HTML.) Like Outlook express, hotmail also will give you trouble in rendering the email, while other engines like google, yahoo will render properly.

Conversion of PSD design to emailer will be a real challenge for web developers to check for Email Compatibility. Keep in mind that you have to use basic html and inline style to be used in order to render your emails properly(at least to an extend) in all the engines.

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How to write HTML css code for Emailers?

Many of them are asking me, how to write html css code for emailers? Do it have any formates? On my view, i say yes it has a format to write. Now a days emailers are playing a majore role to promote their products or web pages in order to increase their conversion rate. Report says that a neat simple text mailers are making lots of conversions.

There are two types of mailers. One is text mailer and another one is image based mailer. Text mailers are given most important than image mailer, coz text mail can have the users glance that what he wants. But in image mailer unless the user clicks the display images he cannot view the mail. Most of the mail engine's like Google, Yahoo will not show the images until the user click the display images. This may get user get irritated and without opening the mail he will delete it. Make sure that your mailer will not fall in their Junk box.

Format for writing E mailers
A basic html and css code writing is enough for writing E mailers. Like tables and inline style is needed. You cannot apply any css file to the emailer. While writing html code, make sure that you should not use positions, backgrounds, negative margins and also padding (in cases). You must reset your css before starting an element.

Email Compatibility
Most of the companies are looking for email compatibility for all emailers just like browser compatibility. Most of them are Gmail, Yahoo, Sify, Microsoft Outlook express, Hotmail etc.. Make sure that your code is compatible for the above mentioned email services. So please use basic html and css tags in order to render properly in all these services.

Note:
Make sure that you add a link on the top of the emailers saying that cannot view, please view it in an html format. So that they can view to page in a browser, if they have problem in opening in email. And also add disclaimers like unsubscribe(if needed) at the end of the footer.

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