How did Apple do it and Microsoft cannot do it?
Funny, huh?

I think the iPhone simply uses WebDAV (like OWA does) to talk with the Exchange FE. When querying exchange to get the message, you can choose if you want to get the “textDescription” property or the “htmlDescription” property.

I don’t see any other reason apart from bandwidth to make Microsoft decides we will need. This is what happen when you can’t see more than 2 inch ahead your nose.

I wonder how hard would it be write a connector to use… i’m thinking of doing it since maybe 2 year and by the time I get the time to start it, Exchange 2007 will be history!!!

-lynam

I’m wondering if its possible to fake the server response to whatever Exchange 2007 reponds with, or fake the handheld into thinking its syncing over a different medium than OTA. Clearly the phone supports it, but Microsoft is crippling it somewhere.

So, from what I can tell, the Pre tries to receive the email as HTML from ActiveSync but can’t, it displays it in plain text. When you reply to the email, it tries again to use HTML formatting but fails and end up removing all formatting and running all the words of the original emails together.

This issue on the Palm Pre does not affect everyone, just some people. I’m trying to figure out if it’s an issue with the Pre or ActiveSync. Is there a way to configure what version of HTML ActiveSync uses? That’s one of the only things I can think of now.

We use Exchange 2003. The iPhones in our organization work fine (full HTML formatting as @Shay indicated). WinMo 6.x receive in plain text and Palm Pre’s receive in plain text but reply in HTML w/ no formatting.

I’m trying to work with Palm on this issue as it looks terrible with I reply to an HTML formatting email. The interesting thing is that if someone sends me an email that’s been entirely converted to plain text, my reply works just fine.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks for the EAS technical deep-dive. FTR, I totally agree with you re: Exchange & Outlook right now. Pathetic.

@ Tim…

You’ll see a similar issue of both client and server updates being required for certain feature support on other mobile platforms. Blackberry immediately leaps to ming. The only reason I even blogged this HTML over EAS/Direct Push item is the conflicting/unclear info from MS regarding the true HTML e-mail capabilities of WM6.

So for POP3 and IMAP, it is on the client to parse the message. You can do it out of a telnet session:

telnet mailserver 110
user vlad
pass mypass
retr 1

Client interprets the formating, bang.

With ActiveSync something else happens.

In 2003, the PocketPC accesses the server like this:

POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync?User=vlad&
DeviceId=blah&DeviceType=PocketPC&Cmd=Sync

and the server looks at that and says: Here is the plain text content, whereas it doesn’t do the same for the desktop tethered activesync connections.

-Vlad

Actually, this is an Exchange 2007 CAS “feature”; CAS or Client Access Server is the new Exchange 2007 frontend for client access that runs services like pop3, imap, activesync, etc.

The 2003 server-based activesync is set to push text mail down for PocketPC’s regardless of the version because it simply doesn’t check for the capabilities. The 2007 server-based activesync is slightly more evolved than that, thus the ability to send down correct data, in correct format, with correct permissions and IRM stuff like do not forward. For “dumb” protocols the content type doesn’t matter, it just retrieves the message and parses it on the device just like every other POP3 or IMAP client.

Thats all there is to it, there is no bogeyman. Sometimes advanced development requires work on both the server and the client and those are separate teams – so they both need to be in step with one another. In 2003 they were not, in 2007 they are.

I mean, if you want to complain about a lack of common sense, take a look at Exchange-Outlook combo.

-Vlad

-Tim Barrett