With the consumer release of Office 2007 nearly two-weeks away, there are some details that are emerging that might keep you away from using the popular email client that has been around for a long time: Outlook. The newest version is fancied up to look pretty and I have actually been playing around with the last Beta release for a few weeks now. There are a lot of really nice features that it has, especially since everything is in such a tightly integrated package. However, there is also something that I didn’t realize.
Campaign Monitor has pointed out that Outlook 2007 switched from using Internet Explorer as its rendering engine to using Microsoft Word. Anyone that has used Microsoft Word for the simplest HTML tasks knows how bad it is at generating HTML…it is really one of the ugliest things a Web developer will ever see. Application’s like Dreamweaver even have built-in tools to help clean-up the Microsoft Word HTML, which demonstrates just how bad it really is.
Here is a list of things that’s “new” in Outlook 2007:
- No background images – Background images in divs and table cells are gone.
- Poor background color support – Give a div or table cell a background color, add some text to it and the background color displays fine. Nest another table or div inside though and the background color vanishes.
- No support for
floatorposition– Completely breaking any CSS based layouts right from the word go. Tables only. - Shocking box model support – Very poor support for padding and margin, and you thought IE5 was bad!
This quote from the site really sums it up well:
Imagine for a second that the new version of IE7 killed off the majority of CSS support and only allowed table based layouts. The web design world would be up in arms! Well, that’s exactly what the new version of Outlook does to email designers.
I have had the pleasure of designing email templates for several businesses, and fortunately for me I created them using tables without any background images. I had thought about doing the designs using CSS, but I wanted to make sure that I would use something that almost all email providers would be able to render properly. I have checked the email templates that I created and they all seem to display properly, but for anyone who has already stepped into the CSS realm I’m sure there will be a lot of frustration.
I found this article via the Firefox Extension’s Guru Blog (who also mentioned it in the forum) and he brought up a good point. He said:
Granted right now Thunderbird is not as feature packed as Outlook. But Thunderbird 2 will be adding several new features such as the new message alert indicator, message tags and may be even tabs. Thunderbird 2 will also render incoming HTML e-mails via Firefox.
Since Thunderbird (version 2 Beta 1 available here) does use Firefox to render emails, is this going to be the next big push by Web developers? I haven’t met a single Web developer who has said the they prefer to design websites for Internet Explorer of Firefox because it is easier, and will email templates be the next big complaint? There are a lot of newsletters and weekly updates that I receive who use CSS for their formatting, and these people are probably going to be frustrated beyond belief with having to change their templates to use tables.
Mozilla Thunderbird might not have as many features, but I think it will be quickly catching up. It can already manage your emails, contact list, and with the help of an add-on (called Lightning) it can also handle your calendar. Outlook also manages your tasks/to-do lists which can be done with the ReminderFox extension in Thunderbird. The only other thing that I can think of which Outlook has is a note-taking application, and the QuickNote extension for Thunderbird should be able to add that feature.
So that just goes to show that Thunderbird might eventually take the reigns in the personal information management world, but hopefully an office productivity suite like OpenOffice.org will start to bundle it with their existing software. I would have to imagine that it would help out Thunderbird’s market share quite a bit.
I have used Lightning, but not much. Nothing to do with the extension itself, maily I use Yahoo! for my calendar.
If they can get Lightning intergrated well into Thunderbird, they’ll have an Outlook killer. I like Thunderbird (only started using it last week) but I still use Outlook as default, only for Calendar.
You can’t really compare Outlook and Thunderbird.
Can I use Thunderbird to schedule meetings with co-workers? View my co-workers calenders? Assign a task to one of my employees or keep track of my own tasks? Will Thunderbird integrate with Active Directory? Can you send instant messages with Thunderbird? Does Thunderbird have built in support for RSS feeds? Can you share contact information with Thunderbird?
Heck you even pointed out, Thunderbird doesn’t even have a calender, it requires an extension.
To put in bluntly, Outlook is for businesses and Thunderbird is for casual users. The only real comparison that can be made is that they both can read email. But you’re right, Outlook will read HTML email poorly.
Actually you can do [kb.mozillazine.org] and the Calendar Add-on does let you [mozilla.org] I’m not saying that you’re wrong in thinking that the comparison fails between the two applications, but it is definitely getting closer. For right now the calendar application is only available as an add-on or a standalone app, but once everything gets ironed out I am sure that it will get incorporated into Thunderbird. Just give it time and I think you’ll be surprised at what it can evolve into over the next few years until the next version of Outlook is released.
Then there is always syncing your outlook to your PDA phone, or how about with ACT! Contact manager.
I have always disliked Outlook but lets face it. There are so many features that nobody else provides.
I have no doubt that Thunderbird can and will evolve, the question is what will it become. Do Thunderbird users want an Outlook clone? I wouldn’t think so. In fact if Thunderbird is an email client I would be concerned that it may evolve into something else that may distract from the original goal of the Thunderbird project; Safe, Fast, and easy email.
The goal of MS Outlook: Improve the way you manage information, communicate with others, and organize your work—all from one place.
Outlook is a much more complicated program and I would hope Thunderbird would not strive to be a MS Outlook replacement.
It always looked to me like Thunderbird was trying to move toward a fast Outlook replacement. However, if I step back and think about it I could see Thunderbird remaining an email client primarily because it looks like they are just trying to separate out from the Web browser what some people don’t use. For example, Opera has an email client that is built-in but since a lot of people don’t use it I could see how it would be classified as “bloat.” For that reason Mozilla probably pulled the email client out of their browser (Firefox) and put it into a separate solution so that users who still want email can have it, but they don’t have to clutter up their browser with it.
Never even knew Opera had an e-mail client.
Yep, it’s nothing too fancy but if you are looking for an easy-to-use email client that is integrated with the browser I would say it is the best you’re going to find.
Oh no! OMFG! No more CSS in email? Tell me that’s not true! Does this mean they’ll also take away that wonderful thing that is JavaScript in email? And in 2008 M$ might even admit that HTML mail shouldn’t exist in the first place? What will those corporate d*ckheads do then?
Or, BTW, anyone will finally notice that not only Opera has a remarkable email client but there are also The Bat!, Becky!, Mulberry, Eudora/Penelope, Foxmail, Pegasus (not dead yet), Courier, Poco, Barca, Pimmy, PMMail and lots of others. Not that any of those would render CSS too well. Or the kind of crap that Word emits. Wait, there’s also PINE. Or…
Yikes, I forgot: There is even a world outside Windows:
Gmail, Mail.app, Entourage, PowerMail, KMail, Evolution, Sylpheed, Balsa, Scribe, Mutt…
Are you kidding me? Outlook is meant to be used on an Exchange server in offices. You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. Stop using pirated software, obviously you did not pay for your copy of Office.
Thunderbird is no better than Outlook EXPRESS, your weirdo. Why make the comparison between Thunderbird and Outlook? Outlook is far, far more powerful than Thunderbird.
And don’t lie. You are using Outlook for your Gmail account right, and now that Thunderbird works with Gmail POP otb, you base yur entire opinion on that. Pathetic isn’t it?
Actually, I received a copy of Office 2007 for review purposes so it is definitely not pirated.
I AM NOT using Thunderbird or Outlook for my Gmail accounts because I like using the Web interface and having everything located in one central location.
I made the comparison with Thunderbird and Outlook because additional features are coming to Thunderbird, such as the calendar add-on, which make it more like Outlook. Both cater to a different audience so I guess it all depends on your personal preference.
DAMN! A guy offers his opinion and gets’ FLAMED badly for it. Anonymous, and Wanderer, you two are jackasses. The beauty of Thunderbird, and Firefox is that EVERY user can make them as bloated and useless with extensions, or as slim and sleek with none. The USER chooses how THEY want to use the product. AGAIN because you’d can’t wait to flame someone with an opinion they developed on their own, you totally miss any valid point being made. Do us all a favor and write your own blogs for people like you who would rather sit around and download bestiality porn.
Thanks “self-thought”, glad to see I didn’t go overboard.
What are referring too?
If it’s regarding my comments they are not “flaming”, it’s called a conversation. It’s why there is a comment section. I wouldn’t expect someone like you who’s into bestiality to understand a conversation. After all, animals can’t talk.
No, I think he was referring to the annoymous commenter who claimed that I was using Outlook for my Gmail account.
This was the comment he was referring to.
Now with Thunderbird 2 and Lightning, You can manage events, send and receive invitations to and from Apple iCal or other calendars that support ics based invitations.
Not forgetting shared calenders with CalDAV.
Sure Outlook has alot of enterprise features, but at the cost of an Exchange Server!
I find that Outlook has very poor UI design, unstable and too easily targetted by hackers. I get the impression that the more you use M Software the more you are stuck with them and the more you have to pay for products that are always hard to use and seriously flawed.
Outlook users can’t even send rich text emails with the peace of mind that all the recipients not using outlook can read them. Thanks to the silly winmail.dat thingy.
Seems like it took them abt 7 years to deal with this security loophole that affected Outlook 2000 – 2003.
[microsoft.com]
It is definitely true that Microsoft tries to lure you into using there software, and don’t make it easy to leave it. The last time I used Outlook I had a heck of a time trying to export emails for use in Thunderbird, but then again getting your emails out of Thunderbird isn’t the easiest thing in the world either.
I use thunderbird for email on my laptop as it is fast and much better than the outlook express that came bundled with windows. I really don’t feel like paying out loads to use office, so thunderbird much like the openoffice.org I have installed on my computer wins over the expensive microsoft products and free crap that comes with windows. And this is the point. The software is great for home use and the add-ons allow you to make it as feature rich or streamlined as you like.
If you are looking for a note taking application to go with thunderbird I suggest you go for evernote of which both free and paid versions are available.
I agree with you David. And the Evernote app is a great program for taking notes. Even the free version is way better than Outlooks note-taking capabilities.
I’m not about to say that all Microsoft products are great but to say Outlook is seriously flawed, suffers from a very poor UI design, and is unstable is going overboard. I’ve used three different version of Office at two different employers and have had nearly NO problems.
Also, people tend to forget that Microsoft Office offers something many other office productivity suites do not; a development platform. For many enterprises, they use Office to automate many of their back-end day-to-day tasks. Office has a very robust API and it gets better with each release. For the company I was with at the time, the enhancement to the API from Office 2000 to 2003 was worth the cost to upgrade. There was a lot of productivity to gain by leveraging the additions to the API.
For all it’s faults it is still the best solution for the majority of enterprises and small businesses alike.
I never really thought about the benefits companies get by upgrading Outlook and taking advantage of new API features. I could definitely see how that would be important.
If you have ever used Outlook 2007, you will have noticed that it actually handle HTML perfectly, far better than thunderbird, which is extremely poor and insecure. Why outlook lacks background? Because it is much more secure than thunderbird, which renders html very poorly!
In fact, that most people like thunderbird is only because it is free. They does not have enough money to buy Outlook so they cheat themselves by tell themselves and others repeatly that thunderbird is better, although it is extremely poor actually.
There are some important -for some people- advantages in Thunderbird that as far as I know does not exist in outlook but is being missed here. I have a legit outlook 2007 which I haven’t used much so I may be wrong. I have an outlook 2002 at work and 2007 at home.
1- Portable Thunderbird. This is a good feature for carrying your entire email account without having a laptop. I can run thunderbird from the pen drive or copy/sync the directory to a machine and use it there. For example I was in the airport and found PCs with a usb connector and so I was able to check my emails. It is easy to backup and even mess around with a copy of the account.
2- I am not sure if outlook provides tagging but this feature can do wonders.
3- Thunderird have thread view, which I am not sure if outlook provide that or not.
I have not used outlook much but I know it has a lot of features like exchange server support which can be a must have for businesses but for some lite/personal use and specially considering the add-ons, it is a great alternative.
I do love having the Portable version of Thunderbird…it’s nice always having my email with me without needing to use webmail.
Outlook is great when it works. I used to use Outlook 2007 on my office computer under XP Pro and it was great. Unfortunately, I had to switch to Thunderbird. Why? Because I recently got a new laptop with Vista, and I can assure you that Outlook 2007 is not an alternative under Vista. It is EXTREMELY slow and it crashes all the time. I’ve tried EVERYTHING possible but it still sucks ass (yes, I’ve disabled all the ad-ins; no, Outlook 2007 on my laptop is not an upgrade from 2003 and no, I do not have a particularily large number emails on the server). Bottom line: the software is not properly tested and it simply works very poorly under Vista (make a simple Google search and you’ll see that I’m hardly the only one with these problems). What about Thunderbird? No, it’s not as nice as Outlook but it works fine on both my machine so that’s what I’m currently using. With the Lighting Calendar, it’s (almost) comparable to Outlook. One thing is clear, it is much faster (also on the XP machine).