However, William Kennedy’s response seemed to miss the point. HTML email designers don’t care if Word is used to compose HTML emails: what concerns us is the fact that Word is used to render emails which have been professionally coded according to the HTML spec.

I agree with William’s observation that “there is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability”. That is the crux of the problem with HTML email, but it is unfortunate that Microsoft have chosen to sit on their hands until such a consensus magically arrives.

In the meantime I expect Microsoft will do what they always do when one of their products dominates a market: refuse to improve it, and force developers to work around their software’s quirks. I imagine the only thing that will compel Microsoft to “fix Outlook” are market forces, and currently Outlook has no serious competitor on the desktop.

While I’m in favor of the message, and I did tweet to support the campaign, there is a part of me that shies away from efforts that try to bully (a bit harsh, I know) a company into making a specific decision. Either way, they could have done better than the insensitive and stubborn response Microsoft ultimately delivered.