With the holiday season upon us all E-Cubed has been busy with requests by clients to pull together their annual email Holiday Cards and campaigns. Many others will undoubtedly venture forth and do this on their own. With Outlook being the predominant email Grinch in the corporate world we thought we’d pass along some helpful tips on what Outlook 2007 does not like so your efforts are not wasted.
- Background images within DIVs and Table Cells are gone
- CSS support is very limited and must be inline and not linked
- Nested DIVs cause issues with background colours
- Tables are mandatory since CSS Positioning is also gone
- FORM tags will now cause no rendering to occur
- You can only use static images. Animated GIFs are no longer supported
- Flash as well as Video is also eliminated with Outlook 2007
- ALT tags have also been nixed from the rendering although they do show up when no images are loaded.
Microsoft provides a CSS and HTML Validation tool that can be downloaded for free.
What can you do to keep things merry?
- Keep your designs as simple as possible. Focus on the messaging.
- If you’ve invested in a Flash production you will need to link to it from your email.
- Include a link to a Web only version to your card so that you can guarantee it is viewable by all
- Test, Test, Test. (Just like Santa. Make a list and check it twice at the very least – Outlook is naughty)
Good luck to you all and may all your Holiday wishes come true.
Posted on December 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 am by Da Big Cheeze
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