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vangogh
02-01-2013, 02:12 AM
This is probably more helpful for people who have Macs, but Windows users might find it helpful too. Microsoft built a new site modern.ie/ (http://www.modern.ie/) to help you test in IE. You type in the address of a web page and you get a list of things you should probably do to make the site work better in IE.

There's still no substitute for actually using IE to visit your site. You can make no coding errors and you're site can still look off in any browser. Still this is nice site Microsoft created and should prove helpful to developers.

billbenson
02-01-2013, 02:33 AM
Is IE continuing to be more "standards compliant"?

nealrm
02-01-2013, 09:08 AM
If by "standards compliant" you mean that it complies to the standards the Microsoft uses and wants, then yes. :D

Freelancier
02-01-2013, 10:33 AM
Is IE continuing to be more "standards compliant"?

The short answer is "yes". But the real question you want to ask is "Is IE improving its compatibility with other popular browsers?" since that's the real-world issue that most designers face. And the answer to that is definitely "yes". I'm working on a bunch of pages now and IE is more forgiving of screw-ups than the other browsers, but when I get it working on the other browsers, IE seems to go along with that as well.

Now that's IE 9. Prior to that was a mess of hacks and non-compliance with anything any other browser was doing. IE 10 is supposed to be better still.

In fact, I was just fighting for several hours with a CSS issue that only showed up on Safari (both desktop and mobile) and a completely different problem that showed up on my Android tablet. But it worked fine in FireFox, Chrome, and IE9. Once I had the fix for Safari, the other browsers went along with it for the most part.

Harold Mansfield
02-01-2013, 10:40 AM
I just found this yesterday. It is cool and about time.

My issues lately are people using IE7. I have no idea why so many offices still use IE7, but if I had a dollar for every person that tells me something isn't working correctly, (especially with Facebook Apps) "And oh yearh we're using IE7 does that make a difference?", I'd have a lot of dollars.

Truth is Facebook stopped supporting IE7 last year and I suspect that WordPress is too. Lately, since the WP3.5.1 update, a few clients have sent me emails saying that thier site "just stopped working". Come to find out that they are still on IE7.

No matter what I do, there is really no fix. I can't control Facebook. If they say stop using something or your stuff won't work, you should stop using it. Trying to get people to realize that it's 2013 and IE7 was out of date in 2008 is a hard sell when their customers are still using it and complaining that they can't see the app. There's just no solution to that other than "tell you clients that the internet has changed in the last 6 years. Update something."

MyITGuy
02-01-2013, 01:36 PM
Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test - Browsershots (http://browsershots.org/) is a website I use every now and then just to see how a webpage looks across multiple platforms.

vangogh
02-01-2013, 02:38 PM
Jeff I've used Browser shots too. It's a pretty good site. I'm set up now to test in browsers directly. When I bought a MacBook Air a couple of years ago, I set up a dual install with Windows on my old one. I run a program on the Windows side called IE Tester (http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage) to check different versions of IE beyond the one I have installed.


Is IE continuing to be more "standards compliant"?

It's gotten a lot better over the years. It still tends to be the browser that lags, though not so much in things that have become part of the standard, but rather in features that all other browsers have adopted. There are lots of very helpful things that can be done with html and css that don't get used because IE isn't quite there yet. On the other hand there are times when IE is the one that has added something and other browsers are playing catch up.

The real problem with IE is that you can't count on users having the latest version. IE10 is only available for Windows 8. I think it's coming to Windows 7 soon. XP can't upgrade past IE8. Unfortunately many of the things we'd like to use didn't get included until IE9 so it always feels like you have to add a workaround for IE. In time hopefully all browsers update behind the scenes like Chrome. Then we can easily assume everyone's on the latest version of whatever browser they use.

Standards compliant is a bit of a misnomer I think. For example html5 won't officially become part of the standard for another 8or 9 years, but you can safely use it today (with a little bit of Javascript for IE). Much of css is the same. It's really more about what works in which browsers. You essentially have 5 different rendering engines behind nearly all browsers.


Webkit - Safari and Chrome
Gecko - Firefox
Presto - Opera
Trident - IE
(Gt)kHTML - (Gnome)KDE


Most other browsers will use one of these rendering engines. They typically start including new features of css through the use of vendor prefixes. For example at first to use border-radius you would use -webkit-border-radius or -moz-border-radius. Vendor prefixes are no longer needed in any of the browsers above, though we still use them for lots of other things. Those things aren't technically standards yet, but there's no reason you can't use them.

The important thing to understand is that a website doesn't need to look the same in every browser. Take rounded corners. If one browser had squared corners instead of rounded corners, what's the big deal. As long as everything works like it should. Those browsers that can handle the extra get an enhanced version. Those that can't handle it still get a perfectly good site. It's a concept called progressive enhancement. Start with something that works and looks good everywhere and then progressively enhance it for browsers that can handle more without doing anything to break the experience for those browsers that can't handle it.

CD2Solutions
01-07-2014, 11:28 AM
Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test - Browsershots (http://browsershots.org/) is a website I use every now and then just to see how a webpage looks across multiple platforms.

that is quite the tool. bookmarked for later usage :)

Freelancier
01-07-2014, 11:57 AM
For those doing .NET development and have customers complaining about IE10/11 compatibility issues....

.NET Framework 4 Update for IE 10 & 11 (October 2013) (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2836939)

Basically, .NET 4.0 came out before those browser versions, so it doesn't recognize them. The hotfix resolves it. I'm going back to several client servers this week to install it.

FlyPizzaGuy
01-31-2014, 06:30 PM
Windows 8 Start Screen look. Like Windows Mobile. Those are the standards they are finally getting around towards encrypting. Not like that will help more but its the proper step forward.