CSS and Outlook Express

[eriku]

I have a reason to work with MIME mail and there I use CSS. It is obvious that different versions of Outlook Express (or is it Windows versions?) understands some CSS commands in different ways.
Is there any documentation available about this?

[rkoenig]

Hi Eriku, outlook express uses the MSIE rendering engine to display its html/css content, so the differences between say outlook express 5 and 6 will be the same as the differences between MSIE 5 and 6. In other words, outlook express 6 will support the w3c box model and outlook express 5 will support the MS pre MSIE 6 box model.

Plus the various bugs found. So any rendering differences will reflect that. However, it's not that hard to generate css that will work fine in both cases without any major modifications.

Generally, for mime/html emails I'll keep the css very simple, support is just not predictable enough to ensure safe cross email client rendering.

Plus of course a lot of corporate networks don't allow any html to display at all in their emails. Make sure you also include the text only version when generating these emails.

[eriku]

Thank you, rkoenig!
This connection between MSIE and OE regarding CSS - is that "should be" or are they using the same code lines?

[rkoenig]

Windows uses the MSIE html/css rendering engine for everything that renders html/css. So it is the same.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'the same code lines', the applications that use this rendering engine are using the same rendering engine, if that's what you are referring to.

Other email clients are different however, thunderbird for example is a standalone application, that probably uses pieces of the gecko rendering engine that firefox uses, but it's not directly connected like it would be with outlook or outlook express.

Other email clients are the same, eudora for example is completely stand alone, doesn't use any shared components as far as I know.

Then of course you have web based email like aol, hotmail, yahoo. Those will render it differently potentially too, it all depends.

This is why you need to do fairly extensive testing of the css on different platforms, macs will be totally different for example, and on different email clients. Don't assume something will work, and make the chances of it working as high as possible by using the most conservative methods possible, use tables for layouts if required, not css / p, and so on. Avoid margins, definitely avoid floats.

[eriku]

Actually, margins is what gave me problems in the first place.
Thanks again!

[MatthewHSE]

For what it's worth, I never use CSS in HTML e-mails for anything "vital." I'll use it for some eye-candy, but other than that, everything else gets the plain-jane vanilla treatment, including <font> tags, and the infamous width and align attributes. I even use <center> tags just because it's reliable.

My experience with using CSS for margins, padding, layout, etc., is that it is hugely unreliable in most webmail environments where another site's CSS may conflict with what you use in your e-mail. I'd love to use CSS more for e-mails, but for the foreseeable future, I'll be dining scrumptiously on nested tables, font tags, and all the rest of the tag soup leftovers! ;)

[vkaryl]

*laughing* Yeah, and anyone with half a brain disables anything but text in their emails anyway....