Designing complex HTML emails
that look the same across all platforms without bugs is a nightmare. On the one hand, it’s easy to say the solution is to keep things simple with plain text or simpler designs. But that also limits the customer experiences you can create in an email.
That’s because the HTML renderer in Outlook is actually Microsoft Word, which is painfully ridiculous and something only a monopoly could get away with.
I'm as dumbfounded as you, honestly. Even the IE11 engine would be a step-up to be honest.
In other systems, we are still required to use HTML4 Transitional, and Outlook is only part of the problem. Even webmail, which you expect to handle modern HTML, just fails on unexpected ways (no CSS on head, even if it's embedded on the mail, is one of those egregious problems). It's miles better to be the one working on the website than the marketing email.
The official excuse is that those renderers do not include the editing experience they want to provide. But of course Microsoft doesn’t mind that this way they can ignore any standard they want and dictate what features work and what features aren’t available, all without even needing to publish any specification about how it works. The specification is ‘what you see in Outlook is what you get, good luck!’.
Just tried this on the latest version of Outlook Desktop with a UK Uber receipt from yesterday on Windows 10 with a powerful machine (Ryzen 9 3900x, 32GB RAM).
Didn't crash but became very unstable/laggy & 'not responding' faded out for a few seconds.
No issues on the Outlook app on iOS or webmail on Edge though.
