IE 6 and 7 didn't follow many of the w3 standards, like event handling, making it necessary to write code for the standards compliant browsers, and then write MORE code for Internet Explorer. Will IE 8 take us out of this dark age and stabilize web-development? Will it be easier to write one set of code that all browsers will display the same (ish) way?
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Every new release of IE gets us a little closer, but it's more about abandonment of old browsers than releasing of new ones. IE35 might be available, but if IE6 still has a 20% market share, we haven't actually progressed. Campaigns like this one which help educate and upgrade, are what will ultimately solve the problem.
Rex M
2009-04-19 20:20:58
I've worked for a couple of huge corporations whose cost of upgrading from IE6 is deemed to be excessive. They just don't see the ROI. It isn't a matter of education. It's that users aren't allowed to upgrade.
DOK
2009-04-19 20:24:03
Then it is a matter of corporate education. I work for a major multinational which has done ROI studies on the upgrade and concluded it would cost x hundreds of millions of dollars, and so we are still on IE6. Just need the right people in the ear of the right people explaining the studies are flawed.
Rex M
2009-04-19 20:30:34
corporations will start listening as many new projects will declare that they are IE7+ out of the gate (e.g. no IE6 support) I suspect that in the next 12 months the mindset will change dramatically.
scunliffe
2009-04-19 20:37:19
I agree with that, I meant to put it in the post. What we really need to do is upgrade from the older browsers. Thank goodness netscape's finally dead. :D
CrazyJugglerDrummer
2009-04-19 20:38:52
I think scunliffe has hit on the compelling reasons for large companies to upgrade. That, plus whenever they have to give up on Windows XP and start buying PC's and laptops with Windows 7.
DOK
2009-04-19 20:55:17
I know at least one big company (bank, actually) that has an opposite problem - they would LIKE to upgrade to IE7, but their big central banking app only runs on IE6. As I understand, they've been tryin to upgrade for years now, postponing the final upgrade date further and furhter, because they just can't get the app to work on IE7. Next deadline is set for January 1, 2010. Will see if they manage it this time...
Vilx-
2009-04-19 20:59:14
At work, even when we test for Windows 98 - Vista, most workstations are working with Win2000 with some forgotten XP on a manager computer. There *are* companies that don't upgrade even being Microsoft Partners... IE6 won't die until Win2000/XP dies...
voyager
2009-04-19 21:00:34
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As long as browsers are competing over superior features and functionality, there are going to be differences among them. And there's always the issue of different versions -- older versions of browsers, older versions of HTML (version 5 is on the way).
One approach to your dilemma is to use a web development tool that handles this for you. For example, Microsoft's ASP.Net handles browser compatibility automatically for you, so you don't have to write any code for it, including for Ajax functionality.
DOK
2009-04-19 20:22:13
ASP.NET does not handle browser compatibility very well, it simply targets the lowest common denominator. It requires significant work on top of the base ASP.NET framework to get A-grade cross-browser output.
Rex M
2009-04-19 20:36:23
I agree that ASP.Net isn't perfect in this regard. But with the proliferation of browsers -- look at Chrome -- it's hard for tools OR developers to keep up with them all. I don't see an end to this dilemma as long as browsers are competing. It just means you have to have a very good developer to handle it.
DOK
2009-04-19 20:43:08
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IE8 fixes a lot of things - but it is still not up to par.
- No W3C Event Listener/Handlers
- Select lists/Table elements still suffering from buggy styling/manipulation
However with the popularity of libraries like jQuery etc. many of the IE bugs can be worked around.
scunliffe
2009-04-19 20:22:30
+1
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Certainly IE8 takes a significant step closer to standards compliance. I doubt however that it on its own can stabilize web-developement. HTML and related "standards" are part of an inherantly unstable process.
On the one hand we have browsers vendors wanting to differentiate their product from the others and on the other hand we have standards committees that take ages to establish standards so that they are already behind current feature demands by the time any such standards are ratified.
AnthonyWJones
2009-04-19 20:26:59
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While IE8 is a major step forward in terms of CSS2 and CSS2.1 compatibility, mind that it's still failing miserably the ACID3 test so if on one side it'll be way better than its predecessors (especially IE6) it'll still plague us (way too) much...
emaster70
2009-04-19 20:54:46
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New browsers don't solve compatibility problems, they make them worse. There is now a new browser that in some cases does things differently than other browsers. To solve compatibility issues old browser versions need to die out, so that they don't need to be supported anymore. But that takes a long, long time.
sth
2009-04-19 20:54:58
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IE8 will improve the situation to the extent that it takes market share away from IE6. IE7 is not that bad.
There are some folks that don't mind being one version behind but also don't want to be two versions behind. Maybe some of these folks will move to IE7 or leapfrog over it to IE8.
John D. Cook
2009-04-19 21:08:47