Sean Walther's Blog

The Pending Browser Hell – On IE Half Life

Paul Irish, wrote Browser Market Pollution: IE[x] is the new IE6, which details the complexities we have coming up for us as web developers.

I’m glad to see someone fully thought this through.  Browser half life is a significant issue for website accessibility.

When was the last time someone asked you to get your site working in Chrome 9?  Well, that was 3 releases ago, as was IE6 (I’m even ignoring the fact that Chrome 9 was February 2011, and not August of 2001 for IE6).  I’m constantly hearing that a client is asking for IE6 support.  I do all I can to dissuade them (logic, reasoning, and finally .. a 30% surcharge as it requires much more time to debug and handle), but IE6 support is still an issue.  Why?

Because of the half life of Microsoft browsers.

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Tags: Arstechnica, Browsers, Chrome, IE, ie6, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Paul Irish

Facebook to drop IE6 support on IE9 beta day, September 15

I’ve been quiet for  while, and wanted to start up again with some great news.  Facebook is going to stop IE6 support for chat on the IE9 beta day.

Projects always ask about IE6 support, whether they need it, etc.  Surprisingly IE7 and IE8 support is also an issue, since they don’t support many of the cool toys supported by actual modern browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).

I hope IE9 quickly replaces at least the IE7 and IE8 communities.  IE 6 seems here to stay, at least for that last 6-8%.

Some other information from that article:

• Microsoft will support IE6 until April 2014
• Google has removes IE6 support in Google Docs, Google Sites, Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube!
• Microsoft Office Web Apps doesn’t even support IE6 (how could you when trying to do anything cool)

The article quotes numbers as high as 17% for IE6 usage share, but I haven’t seen those numbers in a long time.  My website enjoys an IE6 user base of 0.5% (in the last month, whereas IE, all versions, was around 19%).  Other larger websites I manage see around 7.7% IE6 usage (with IE, all versions, being an amazing 55% of overall traffic).

Tags: browser support, Chrome, Facebook, Google, Ie 6, IE 7, IE 8, ie6, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, internet explorer 6, Microsoft

CSS3 and HTML5 For the masses: HTML5Shiv and CSS3 PIE make it possible

Everywhere I look on the web (the web developer web that is) is CSS3 this, jQuery that, shadows, HTML5.

Such a tease, what about our minimum browser requirements spec?  Damn IE6 is yet again 10% of the target demographic.

Not only is IE6 the problem, but so is the most recent IE8, as well as IE7.  They just don’t support CSS3 and HTML5.

Now we have some solutions…

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Tags: css3, css3 PIE, HTML5, ie6, IE7, IE8, PIE, shiv, web developer

Flowplayer not working in IE8: A solution!

I was just working on some strange Flowplayer bug, it just wouldn’t work in IE8.

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Tags: Flash, Flash Player, flash player 10, Flowplayer, IE, IE8, javascript method

Quick Tip: Delete Temporary Internet Files / Clear Cache – Shortcut Keys in IE8

Web developers have to refresh browser caches a lot (if we even have our browsers set to cache) — if you want a quick way to pull up the “Delete Browsing History” screen in IE8:

Ctrl+Shift+Delete

It’ll pop up, click “Temporary Internet Files” and then “Delete”.  It will stop you from having to click into the menus up top.

Bonus – Force IE8 to “Always Refresh from Server”

If you’re in IE8 and are constantly refreshing the cache, why not temporarily force refreshed content:

Hit F12 (for the Developer Tools)
Click on menu item “Cache” and click on “Always Refresh from Server“

You can look back in there to see a checkbox next to it, so you know it’s on.  It will let you always refresh from the server for just the current browser session (very useful).

Tags: clear cache, Developer Tools, IE8, Internet Explorer 8, Quick Tip, refresh, web developer

Help: IE7 won’t load my JSON but IE8 will – Using a JSON Validator

I just ran into this issue, and found surprisingly little documentation.  My JSON request wasn’t returning.  I was using the jQuery “getJSON” method to send the request out.  Nothing was coming back.

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Tags: Chrome, Firefox, getJSON, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, jQuery, JSON, JSON Validator, JSONLint, Safari

Google Chrome 4.0: Extensions and Bookmark Sync

Today Google officially announced the release of Chrome 4.0.  The update features two major pieces of functionality, Extensions and Bookmark Syncing.  If you already have Google Chrome, just click on the “tool” -> About Google Chrome, and click on “Update” in the lower right corner next to the OK window.  Otherwise, download it from Google. › Continue reading

Tags: adblock, bookmarks, Chrome, Firebug, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, IE, IE Tab, IE7, IE8, iPhone, Xmarks

How you can fix IE8′s slow “View Source”

I installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) on my main machine a few weeks ago, and have been using other browser’s “View Source” since IE8′s default View Source editor takes forever to load.

With all the work, I didn’t have time to figure out how to fix it, but YOU CAN!

IE8 uses an internal viewer by default, but you can easily change it:

1. Get into the Developer Tools screen (F12 or Tools->Developer Tools)
2. File->Customize Internet Explorer View Source (yeah I know, weird)
3. Set to Notepad (like it used to be) or “Other” and use your viewer (I used TextPad)

Now, can anyone recommend a better “View Source” application?  I haven’t looked into this, but it may be a great opportunity to improve efficiency doing HTML and debugging.

Tags: Developer Tools, IE8, Internet Explorer 8, NotePad, Textpad, View Source

CSS in IE8 will support “Tables”, fixes problems in CSS

There’s a great article at Digital Web Magazine, Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong.

One of the problems that has always plagued CSS is absolute positioning, relative positioning, and the need to set things up like a “table”.  By that I mean setting up three divs to look like the following:

<div class="outerContainer">
<div class="textContainer">... longer text ...</div>
<div class="textContainer">... shorter text ...</div>
<div class="textContainer">... shorter text ...</div>
</div>

The problem here, being that if the first text container grows, we want the other 2 containers to grow with it.

Obviously, we could specificy a specific height for the textContainer class, and they would all match.  But what if the first container copy grows, or maybe the copy in the 2nd or 3rd container grows longer than the first container.

This becomes even more complex when specificying multiple rows of textContainers, where there are vertically spanning cells as well.

In traditional “non-css” HTML this was done simply through tables, very simply actually.  Now that everyone has turned to CSS to make page sizes smaller, make styling effective, and increase flexibility of layouts — we try to avoid tables unless we are presenting a .. Table.

Normally I would have created a clever background image that has a top, bottom (both divs above and below the textContainers), and a tiling vertical background to appear like all columns have the correct sizing (when in fact they don’t).  Effectively removing control over each textContainer’s background, and the main container’s background from the CSS and putting it into a series of images.  

It worked but we sacrificed flexibility.

Take a look at the article, again, Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong, as they detail how IE8 aims to fix this behavior through a series of CSS display properties.

Tags: CSS, HTML, IE8, Microsoft, Table