Thread by @HTeuMeuLeu

I've finally been able to play with the new Outlook beta on Windows (the “Outlook One” moving away from Word). And it’s… WONDERFUL. Quick thread. 👇 #emailgeeks

First, it took me forever to find how to switch to the Beta update channel. While it's a simple dropdown option on macOS, on Windows it’s… complicated. Ended up doing it via the command line because that was the easiest way (following this article: urtech.ca/2021/07/solved…).

Also note that if you want to try it now, you need at least a Microsoft 365 Business Standard account. Support for other types of email accounts is “coming soon”, according to the account settings window.

So right after launch, I got prompted with a dialog saying that my Edge version was outdated. And then got this install window. This confirms this new Outlook runs on an Edge Webview. So basically: Blink (Chrome’s rendering engine). Goodbye Word’s engine, you won't be missed! ✌️

And then I was in.

I ran a few tests from caniemail. And as expected support for CSS and HTML seems very very close to Outlook-com’s. I almost got tear eyed when I realized this means support for things like CSS background image. (And the very death of VML.) 😭

It also seems to support [ogsb] selectors for dark mode styles. Here’s my dark mode image swap working on Outlook on Windows. (The code, if you’re interested: codepen.io/hteumeuleu/pen…)

I can’t wait to do more thorough tests for caniemail on this. But yeah, this is great. Not “Apple Mail or Outlook on macOS”-great. But definitely “I can’t believe we had to work with Word’s rendering engine for 15 years”-great.

Now I'm really curious to see how hard Microsoft is going to push this as an update. The fact that the whole app is just a webview might be a huge deal breaker for a lot of people and companies. We might just end up in an “XKCD 927” kind of situation.

But if this succeeds, it’s going to be a huge game changer for HTML emails. Goodbye tables, VML, OfficeDocumentSettings, white line bugs, and such. And hello `display:flex`, media queries, etc.

In conclusion, and as the popular saying goes: Microsoft understood the assignment. It took them 15 years, but I'm so glad we’re finally there.