For years, email developers and marketers have shared a common adversary: the Microsoft Word rendering engine. It was the backbone of classic Outlook desktop apps, notorious for breaking modern CSS and making pixel-perfect designs nearly impossible.
Microsoft is finally turning the page with the "New Outlook." By shifting toward a web-based architecture, the hope was for a more consistent, "standardized" experience. However, as with any major transition, new solutions bring new challenges.
“Many of your subscribers will continue to use "Classic" Outlook for years...”
A Modern Foundation
The New Outlook (for both Windows and Mac) is essentially a wrapper for the web version of Outlook. This means it finally supports many modern CSS properties that were previously ignored. In theory, if your email looks good in a browser, it should look good in the New Outlook and verging in the dawn of full HTML5 emails.
New Quirks to Watch For
While the move to a web-based engine is a leap forward, it isn't a silver bullet. Early adoption has revealed several rendering "hiccups" that can frustrate the unprepared:
- Background Image Scaling: Some users have reported issues where background images don't scale correctly or fail to display if the container dimensions aren't explicitly defined.
- CSS Quirks: Even though it uses a web engine, Outlook still applies its own "flavor" of processing. Certain advanced CSS layouts (like Grid or specific Flexbox properties) may still behave inconsistently compared to Chrome or Safari. Sometime some CSS gets completely janked out of the code, but it fails to consistently do it.
- The Transition Period: Many of your subscribers will continue to use "Classic" Outlook for years. This means email teams now have to design for three versions of Outlook: Classic (Word-based), the New Outlook (Web-based), and Outlook.com.
The Essential Takeaway
The "New Outlook" is a massive step toward a more modern email ecosystem, but it hasn't eliminated the need for rigorous testing by an email developer who knows the ins and out of email development.
At Alpaco, we believe the future of email belongs to tools that simplify this complexity. As the landscape shifts, the best strategy remains the same: keep your code clean, use robust fallbacks, and always preview your campaigns across both the old and new versions of Outlook to ensure your message lands exactly as intended.
