Outlook 2007 breaks CSS formatted HTML emails

Unbelievably, Microsoft have made the decision to break the HTML rendering engine in Outlook 2007.

Previous versions of Outlook used the Internet Explorer rendering engine, and generally speaking, could be relied upon to render HTML emails fairly consistently.

Outlook 2007 uses the MS Word (that's right - MS Word) rendering engine to view HTML emails - with disastrous consequences...

Main Casualties:

• Float / Clear
• Positioning
• Entire Box Model
• Background images

See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx for the official word...

So for those of us involved with Email Marketing (or worse still Email Marketing Systems), it looks like its back to table based layouts :(

Honestly, what are Microsoft thinking of!!!!