Development with IE 7 for non-Windows users.

[Daz]

Hi everyone.

I am sure this question has already been asked, but I have not yet
found a satisfactory answer myself. I hope that this may turn into a
discussion, as I would like to hear all views on the subject. I am
going to try not to rant, but I am sure the majority of readers will
understand my frustration.

I am currently a newbie web developer. Although, newbie might be an
understatement -- as I have been doing it for about a year and have
managed to complete some very interesting and quite unique projects --
in my eyes I will always be a newbie purely because I am always
learning.

Anyway... I am running Linux, which is my Operating System of choice
from a development perspective, and I have found a great way to install
IE 5, 5.5 and 6, by means of an installer dreamed up and brought to
life by a kind gentleman at http://www.tatanka.com.br/. Naturally, I am
a fan of Firefox. Again, this is my personal preference for what I
believe to be obvious reasons. Although there are times when I feel
like pulling my hair out because IE refuses to do something that
Firefox does happily, it's a lot nicer to have the opportunity to see
how something works (or doesn't work) in the commonly used IE browsers.

The majority of the world's population probably don't even know what
Firefox is, or perhaps lack the understanding of what a browser really
is, and fail to realise that there are others available besides the one
that came with their operating system. I guess what I am getting at is
that it's just something that has to be dealt with by all web
developers, so of course, we have to create our pages with the most
'used' browser in the world, in mind.

Up until now, I have only had a few quarms about having to develop
material to work with a browser that doesn't comply with a lot of the
existing standards/recommendations. Now my greatest concern is what's
going to happen when I want to develop a page and test it on IE7. When
the final version is released into the public domain, it's going to be
something that Windows users will need to validate their Windows
install for, in order to get it, using WGA.

Again, I am trying not to moan here, but I feel that although it's bad
enough that Microsoft have slammed the door on web developers by being
so different from most other browsers, this time they've made it even
worse, by slamming the door with the web developers fingers still in
it! What are non-Windows users meant to do? Are we expected to pay for
IE7 so we can develop web pages that should work with most browsers
anyway, but actually won't work with IE?

Perhaps I am missing something here. Please could someone point it out
if I am? I don't want to bash Microsoft, but I feel this is starting to
get rediculous, and I suspect I am not on my own.

I welcome the views and opinions of other people who might be in the
same position (i.e. a non-Windows user). Also, any advice on how to
develop web pages that work with IE7, only without using IE7, would be
appreciated.

Many thanks.

Daz.

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Daz,
You hit the nail with "The most used browser in the world". Thats the point.
When developing you have to know your market. Its no use spending 90% of
your development time catering for 10% of the market.
So you have made your personal choices for an operating system and
browser... fair enough.... but Who, What , When, Where and Why? you may ask?

You are now faced with the opposite problem.. you are spending 90% of your
time catering for 80% of the market... trying to code around IE versions on
your non windows development platform. This is by far the biggest slice of
your potential market yet you have choosen a development platform that
caters for the smallest slice.

So is there a strategy forward for you?

Are you going to wait for MS to release a 'fully compliant' browser? I don't
think so. Regardless of 'non-compliance' tag IE IS the most popular browser
(popular may be the wrong word, most used is probably more appropiate) and
there are technical and business reasons why the rollout of a fully
complient IE is difficult, but most importantly there is no return on the
investment for doing so. The only complaintants are developers - market
share 1%.

You will have to decide upon your strategies. You have to ask yourself those
5 questions - who, what, when, where and why.

There is a simple development solution though. The KISS principle - Keep it
Simple/Stupid - avoid fancy styling, actually I think we should all avoid
using server side styling, after all isn't the User King, let the user
decide how they want to see your web pages. Avoid scripting - all browsers
recognise the <a> tag! - Follow the KISS principle and you should be able to
produce pages that will work equally well on all browsers, but regardless of
that you are inviting disaster and embarrasment unless you fully test your
apps on all targeted platforms and browsers. That realy leaves you with no
choice but to get your hands on the additional hardware and software for a
comprehensive testing environment to cater for your target market.

You choice of a development and testing environment should be driven by your
answers to those 5 questions, not your personal preferences. After all are
you in it for fun or for business?

Regards.

 

[Daz]

Hi Daz,
You hit the nail with "The most used browser in the world". Thats the point.
When developing you have to know your market. Its no use spending 90% of
your development time catering for 10% of the market.
So you have made your personal choices for an operating system and
browser... fair enough.... but Who, What , When, Where and Why? you may ask?

You are now faced with the opposite problem.. you are spending 90% of your
time catering for 80% of the market... trying to code around IE versions on
your non windows development platform. This is by far the biggest slice of
your potential market yet you have choosen a development platform that
caters for the smallest slice.

So is there a strategy forward for you?

Are you going to wait for MS to release a 'fully compliant' browser? I don't
think so. Regardless of 'non-compliance' tag IE IS the most popular browser
(popular may be the wrong word, most used is probably more appropiate) and
there are technical and business reasons why the rollout of a fully
complient IE is difficult, but most importantly there is no return on the
investment for doing so. The only complaintants are developers - market
share 1%.

You will have to decide upon your strategies. You have to ask yourself those
5 questions - who, what, when, where and why.

There is a simple development solution though. The KISS principle - Keep it
Simple/Stupid - avoid fancy styling, actually I think we should all avoid
using server side styling, after all isn't the User King, let the user
decide how they want to see your web pages. Avoid scripting - all browsers
recognise the <a> tag! - Follow the KISS principle and you should be able to
produce pages that will work equally well on all browsers, but regardless of
that you are inviting disaster and embarrasment unless you fully test your
apps on all targeted platforms and browsers. That realy leaves you with no
choice but to get your hands on the additional hardware and software for a
comprehensive testing environment to cater for your target market.

You choice of a development and testing environment should be driven by your
answers to those 5 questions, not your personal preferences. After all are
you in it for fun or for business?

Regards.

Hi Rob. Thanks for the reply.

I agree with quite a lot of what you said, however, I also believe that
people should be free to use whatever software they want to view
webpages, and not have one company/organization who dictate how it
should be done, simply because they have the most users.

Standards organizations such as W3C, have members which I believe are
responsible deciding which standards get implemented and which do not.
The members come up with a new standard, and I beleive it has to be
OK'd by at least the majority of the other members in order to be
considered as a standard. The ironic thing, is that for W3C in
particular, Microsoft ARE one of their member organizations. Therefore
they help decide what standards are released into the public domain as
recommendations. If this is the case, then why don't they obide by
them?

In a sense, it's like the government making some kind of law for all of
the countries citizens, and enforcing them, but the government
themselves breaking these laws.

I guess the main reason I decided to use Firefox, besides it seeming to
be more secure and stable, was that I am a bit of a rebel and I am not
a big fan of authoritarians such a Microsoft who dictate how things
should be done. With that said, I agree that I might have shot myself
in the foot. It just seems that Microsoft are abusing their power in
such a way that it even effects the users who don't own any Microsoft
products. Yes, they have done very well to get where they are, but now
they appear to be using crafty strategies to influence everyone else in
the world, even moreso the ones who are trying to give the little guys
(i.e Mozilla) a chance.

I am sad to say this, but I cannot wait for the day when Firefox has
more users than IE. That day might never come, but I can only hope it
does as I don't agree with Microsoft's morals.

Sorry to bust your bubble, but I do it for fun. Don't get me wrong,
I can see where you're coming from, and I agree. But I am just one of
those developers who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of choice,
and that the best things in life are free. I love collaberating with
others to bring new unique ideas to life, and not charging them for it.
It's hard work, but it makes me happy. If anyone decides that they like
what I have created that much, and would like to contribute toward a
few beers, or a months webhosting etc... it's received very gracefully,
but I don't demand it.

It just saddens me to see companies like Microsoft who have already
earnt an absolute fortune, getting greedy. It's everyone's right to
make money, but there is a difference between being greedy and doing
whatever it takes to get it, and playing a fair game.

What I am doing for fun and for others is going to end up costing me
money, which either prevents me from learning and doing what I enjoy,
or forces me to turn it into a money thing and start charging people,
which I shouldn't have to do. The comment you made about web sites
being simple (KISS). Yes, I agree, however, I still believe that you
should be able to design a website the way YOU want to, and not the way
Microsoft says you have to. Imagine what websites would look like if we
had no CSS? Some minimalistic people wouldn't mind, I'm sure, but we
are moving forward in times. Technology is getting more advanced, and
fantastic new things become available.

Microsoft are in the position to affect everyone who doesn't want to
pay them. I personally think they should play fair and release a cross
platform version of IE, but without all the bells ,whistles and other
shiny new stuff. All a web developer really cares about, is how the
page is displayed in the browser and how it works. We don't care about
all the features and other stuff that's added to the browser which
Microsoft are charging the user for.

I had a simple table, with plain text inside of it. The table displays
differently in IE from what it does using Netscape, Opera, Firefox, and
Konqueror. Why? It should be down to the web developer to decide what a
page looks like, and Microsoft shouldn't feel the need to undermine web
developers and add methods to IE that make it look the way Microsoft
thinks it should look.

One more question. As Microsoft have the majority market share, why
doesn't every other browser follow suit and do things Microsoft's way?
Personally, I feel it's because they all want to play fair and use the
standards that have been put in place for a reason.

Many, many thanks for your view, though, Rob. They certainly pointed a
few things out that I had never thought of.

Daz.

 

[Rob ^_^]

Hi Daz,
Aren't we dictacting to the users what we want them to see by imposing
server side styling?

MS has made commitments to make IE7 (and to an extent IE6 SP2) more secure
and standards compliant, but the reality is that the Internet is a segmented
market with a menangery of browser platforms in use by users. (I am not a MS
employee btw, just an enthusiast)Its all good to have standards, I agree,
but reality prevails. A standard will not be universally applied unless it
is enforced. Its impracticle to impose laws that require users only to use a
browser that is fully compliant to w3 standards. Thats it, they are only
standards not laws! I am sure that the development of IE7 has required some
sort of compromise in applying the w3c styling standards and at the same
time retaining backward compatibility to the huge volume of existing web
pages that have been developed for the earlier versions of the browser.

I would suggest that it is indeed practicle and extreemly cost effective to
forget about using server side styling. No additional development costs,
less need to test for cross-browser compatibility. I have been indoctrinated
with the dictim that "The User is King".

Regardless of what are the standards though we (as developers) will always
have to thoroughly test our web applications on a number of platforms and
under a number of different scenarios. The weakest link in the whole system
is the loose nut that holds the keyboard!

It just makes sence to devote our development effort in proportion to the
market exposure and usage of our target platforms/browsers. There may be
standards, but there is also the reality of the 'market'.

Regards.

 

[Tim Judd]

Hi Daz,
Aren't we dictacting to the users what we want them to see by imposing
server side styling?

MS has made commitments to make IE7 (and to an extent IE6 SP2) more secure
and standards compliant, but the reality is that the Internet is a segmented
market with a menangery of browser platforms in use by users. (I am not a MS
employee btw, just an enthusiast)Its all good to have standards, I agree,
but reality prevails. A standard will not be universally applied unless it
is enforced. Its impracticle to impose laws that require users only to use a
browser that is fully compliant to w3 standards. Thats it, they are only
standards not laws! I am sure that the development of IE7 has required some
sort of compromise in applying the w3c styling standards and at the same
time retaining backward compatibility to the huge volume of existing web
pages that have been developed for the earlier versions of the browser.

I would suggest that it is indeed practicle and extreemly cost effective to
forget about using server side styling. No additional development costs,
less need to test for cross-browser compatibility. I have been indoctrinated
with the dictim that "The User is King".

Regardless of what are the standards though we (as developers) will always
have to thoroughly test our web applications on a number of platforms and
under a number of different scenarios. The weakest link in the whole system
is the loose nut that holds the keyboard!

It just makes sence to devote our development effort in proportion to the
market exposure and usage of our target platforms/browsers. There may be
standards, but there is also the reality of the 'market'.

Regards.

Daz,

I've read your posts, and Rob's replies. I see both sides of the story.

However, since Microsoft has obviously ignored or superceded the
standards that most other browsers accept, I rely only on the standards.

If you code the site to be W3C compliant with their validator, no amount
of code to get it to appear the same is worth the time. Validate the
code, and if MSIE renders it differently, it is not the web developer's
fault. It is only the rendering engine itself that is to blame. And in
this topic, the rendering engine is made by microsoft, so I blame
microsoft for the inability to render W3C standards properly.

I do web design as a hobbyist only. I suck at the design because I want
it to be lined up, but then I remember about the W3C standards and
abandon the website design.

The newer thing out there is to turn all scripting off -- well, it's
possible to do a complete site w/out client side scripting, but it can
make dynamic pages a pain... Where you're back to square one when the
web was "created" -- static HTML pages that never change. Don't confuse
this with dynamic pages that change on server-side scripting, which is
all technology.


In short -- the long answer is: yes, there is always inconsistencies.
And it's the software developer's fault.
short answer: Code to W3C standards, leave the rendering alone.

I would like to know what your final decision is, once you come up with
it.

 

[Daz]

Hi Daz,
Aren't we dictacting to the users what we want them to see by imposing
server side styling?

No, not at all. We are simply saying, this is how I beleive my creation
should be viewed. By using CSS as opposed to inline styles a user is
able to override the external styles if they choose to and also posess
the know how. However, it's safe to assume that not everyone is a web
developer, and not everyone knows what HTML is, let alone how to write
code with it. From my own experience (depending on the context of the
web site, of course), some sites do look very attractive and make you
want to stay on there. Not everyone is a minimalist. For those who are,
you could always offer an option to switch the CSS off, leaving them
with the page as it was before CSS. Again, yoou are simply suggesting
to the user what it should look like, they still have the power to
change it if they wish and have the know how. It's really no different
from me saying "Here's my site with no colour or formatting". It's
still displaying it using the developers chosen method as a default.
Everyone's taste is different. It's the developers job to try and
please everyone (although it's often impossible).

MS has made commitments to make IE7 (and to an extent IE6 SP2) more secure
and standards compliant, but the reality is that the Internet is a segmented
market with a menangery of browser platforms in use by users. (I am not a MS
employee btw, just an enthusiast)Its all good to have standards, I agree,
but reality prevails. A standard will not be universally applied unless it
is enforced. Its impracticle to impose laws that require users only to use a
browser that is fully compliant to w3 standards. Thats it, they are only
standards not laws! I am sure that the development of IE7 has required some
sort of compromise in applying the w3c styling standards and at the same
time retaining backward compatibility to the huge volume of existing web
pages that have been developed for the earlier versions of the browser.

I totally agree, even though it doesn't make sense to me why Microsoft
chose to be different. I guess that I strive for perfection within
reason, and IE7 has now turned into a dark corner.

I would suggest that it is indeed practicle and extreemly cost effective to
forget about using server side styling. No additional development costs,
less need to test for cross-browser compatibility. I have been indoctrinated
with the dictim that "The User is King".

Agreed, but it still doesn't make sense to me why a plain table with no
styling, with plain text still renders completely differently on IE.
It's only a table! Hehe.

Regardless of what are the standards though we (as developers) will always
have to thoroughly test our web applications on a number of platforms and
under a number of different scenarios. The weakest link in the whole system
is the loose nut that holds the keyboard!

Amen to that!

It just makes sence to devote our development effort in proportion to the
market exposure and usage of our target platforms/browsers. There may be
standards, but there is also the reality of the 'market'.

True, but again, the way Microsoft are playing it, in order to develop
for their browser (which in my experience is busted), you have to pay.
That's what I don't agree with. A nice, free, cross-platform release of
the IE rendering engine would really make me a happy chappy. I don't
care about the features thay've added to the browser, nor do I care
about using them. Just being able to see how to page is displayed, even
if it's without CSS/script, would be great. Perhaps IE7 will eliminate
the need for extensive testing of HTML code with that browser. Maybe
Microsoft have finally made everything right by releasing a browser
that DOES render things the way they should? I guess I'll never know...

Thanks again Rob!

 

[Daz]

Daz,

I've read your posts, and Rob's replies. I see both sides of the story.

I'm glad you do. I also accept that there's not just one side.

However, since Microsoft has obviously ignored or superceded the
standards that most other browsers accept, I rely only on the standards.

That would make sense, but IE still renders things differently.
Although I can't vouch for IE7. Aren't JavaScript and CSS/CSS2 in the
standard? I am pretty sure that CSS is, but IE doesn't even support the
:hover event. It's insane.

If you code the site to be W3C compliant with their validator, no amount
of code to get it to appear the same is worth the time. Validate the
code, and if MSIE renders it differently, it is not the web developer's
fault. It is only the rendering engine itself that is to blame. And in
this topic, the rendering engine is made by microsoft, so I blame
microsoft for the inability to render W3C standards properly.

Plausable deniability. I like that. It would be hard to live with, but
I think it's 'doable'. But shouldn't all pages display correctly from
within the most 'used' browser in the world?

I do web design as a hobbyist only. I suck at the design because I want
it to be lined up, but then I remember about the W3C standards and
abandon the website design.

The newer thing out there is to turn all scripting off -- well, it's
possible to do a complete site w/out client side scripting, but it can
make dynamic pages a pain... Where you're back to square one when the
web was "created" -- static HTML pages that never change. Don't confuse
this with dynamic pages that change on server-side scripting, which is
all technology.

I design all of my pages to work without script (where possible, of
course). Sometimes script can be very useful. If I wanted to make some
kind of validator for example. I see script as being a method for
allowing users to use programs that you've written. Be it to validate
data, or format data or whatever else the need might before. I also see
it as an excellent opportunity to save some bandwidth on my website.
Rather than having to render an entire page each time, the page is only
rendered once, and their computer does the rest of the work once we
send it a little extra data upon request. Obviously, this is using
AJAX, which I think is very useful. Obviously, if a users browser
doesn't support script, then they can do it the slightly longer way,
but I think that in general script is a marvelous thing that should be
taken advantage of. At the same time, we shouldn't be shutting out any
of the users who have browsers that don't support JavaScript, even
though about 99.9% of browsers these days will support it. As Rob said,
we should be catering for the majority, not the minority. I think we
should be catering for just about everyone. No one likes having
web-based doors slammed in their face:

"Sorry, to use this page you must enable JavaScript".
"Sorry, to use this page your browser must support frames".

I disagree with all of that kind of thing. I like to have a backup
plan, and try to divert the users browser using <noscript> tags between

In short -- the long answer is: yes, there is always inconsistencies.
And it's the software developer's fault.
short answer: Code to W3C standards, leave the rendering alone.

I would like to know what your final decision is, once you come up with
it.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I will ever reach a 'final decision' as
such. It's human nature to want what we can't have, and as a developer
I will always have ideals which I will grumble about. It due time,
these annoyances will no doubt be resolved, and new annoyances will
replace them. I guess we can only do the best we can to please
everyone. (Which is more than I can say about Microsoft. Hehe!)

Thanks for your comments Tim. I really appreciate them. I understand
that all the decent developers just get on with it and make the most of
the tools they have to hand. I understand that I am in the minority as
an idealist. However, I am a firm believer that if anything is ever
going to change, now is the time to work toward it. I know I am not
very influencial, but there's no harm in trying. At the absolute worst,
nothing will change, but you never know unless you try.

I have written a nice email to Microsoft, expressing my concerns with
regards to this matter. I am not going to hound them, nor write abusive
or threatening emails to them as it's not my kind of thing, but I would
be interested to know what they suggest. It wouldn't surprise me if
they don't reply at all as I am not a 'paying customer'.

All the best.

Daz