document updated 11 years ago, on Apr 20, 2013
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 allows you to compose an HTML document, and then cut-n-paste this into the chat, and others will see your HTML.
HTML sanitizier
The HTML sanitizer isn't very picky. Things that work:
- <marquee>
- <div style="position:relative; top:-10em">
- <style>
This works just fine. Note that the style changes apply to the current message only.
Things that don't work:
- <a>
- <img>
- <script>
- <blink> (it doesn't work in normal IE either)
In combination with various wingdings-like fonts, you can do some kind of creative things.
Wingdings-like fonts that we have at work:
- Bookshelf Symbol 7
- Candid
- Hoefler Text Ornaments
- ITC Zapf Dingbats
- Marlett
- Monotype Sorts
- MT Extra
- r_symbol
- Symbol
- SymbolPS
- Webdings
- Wingdings
- Wingdings 2
- Wingdings 3
Message length limit
There is a limit of the size of each messages. This limit isn't strictly based on the number of characters in the HTML source, but rather is based on the final SIP message after the message has been fully assembled. The SIP message limit is 64k bytes. This translates to ~4,000 to ~10,000 characters. It's not clear what makes the size limit vary; it may be character encoding differences, or different versions of Communicator which use different amounts of space for the SIP header.
It is possible to send small pixel art over Microsoft Communicator. However, the message size limit puts a severe constraint on the size of the pixel art that's possible (even after using tricks like run-length-encoding via colspan, and other hackery).
One possible way around this is to send pixel art one row at a time, which means you only need to fit a single row into the size limit. To do this, however, Microsoft Communicator must display adjacent message lines next to each other, with zero padding between them. So far, I've tested this on:
- Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 — tested and confirmed that adjacent lines touch each other, with zero padding