Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Microsoft finally got around to launching Internet Explorer 7.0 last month.
Prior to the new browser’s release, my company, Etre, had been receiving a steady stream of calls from clients who were becoming increasingly worried that their sites would fall apart under the new world order. This, in turn, worried us.
We had taken Microsoft seriously when they warned of inconsistencies in page rendering between IE6 and IE7. Even more so when they announced their intention to distribute IE7 as a “high priority” automatic update (thereby ensuring that the millions of existing IE6 users would adopt the new browser en mass).We’d therefore downloaded the various public betas and had thoroughly tested the sites that we’d built and maintained. Yet we hadn’t unearthed any major problems. At least, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a few tweaks.
“Maybe we’ve missed something,” we thought. So we spoke to our clients again, finding that many had been approached by design agencies prophesising doom and recommending costly redesign programmes to ensure that their sites would be “IE7-ready™”. At about this time, reports from certain quarters of the media began to surface making similar claims of impending disaster. These articles often likened the automatic update process to Microsoft flicking a switch and bringing down the whole ruddy interweb in one fell swoop.
While our experience suggested that things wouldn’t be quite this dramatic, we were keen to gain a better understanding of the problem (Firefox of course had a new release around the same period, but IE still has massive market share - although it’s always recommended to test on a range of browsers). So on Friday 20th October – two days after IE7 was released, and two weeks before the automatic update process began – we kicked off a quick and dirty study. We fired up two machines and compared the homepages of all 100 companies on the FTSE 100 Index (the UK equivalent of the Dow Jones Index) in both IE6 and IE7. Were these companies ready for IE7? Were their sites bent badly out of shape? Had this all been a big fuss over nothing? We intended to find out.
12.7 Million Sites In Need Of A Little TLC?
The results were insightful. The worst affected homepage was that of the Alliance and Leicester bank, which despite looking neat and tidy in IE6, looked like it had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson in IE7. Its contents burst out of its right-hand margin and spilled across its footer; while important information dropped a font size or two and became disconnected from the rest of the page.
Yet the Alliance and Leicester’s homepage was the exception, not the rule. Most other homepages fared pretty well in IE7, and those that did break suffered only minor presentation problems.
In total, we found that thirteen of the FTSE 100 homepages were broken in IE7. A finding that if extrapolated to the internet as a whole (which we admit requires a bit of a leap of faith), suggests that there are around 12.7 million websites in need of a little TLC. That’s 12.7 million websites that aren’t ready for IE7.
Since posting the results of our study online, we’re starting to think that this figure is a conservative estimate. Over the last week or so, we’ve turned our attention away from corporate sites and extended our analysis to online retailers. In this area, it seems like every second site has an IE7-related glitch or two (we’ve posted screenshots of some of them on our blog that you can take a look at). We’ve also been inundated with reports of companies warning their IE6-using customers not to install IE7 or telling them to expect some “weirdness” for a while (companies like Reuters, PeopleSoft and even 37signals).
For most us, telling our users not to install IE7 or to expect some strange behaviour just isn’t an option. And with Microsoft’s automatic roll-out process well underway, these types of issues need to be fixed fast. To help you do this, we thought that we would summarise the most common problems we’ve found during our studies and demonstrate how they can be fixed.
The Standards Issue
“You’re wasting your time,” I hear you say; “my sites are built to adhere to W3C specifications, so a newer, more-standards-compliant browser should have no problem displaying them as I intended.” Hmmm – you might be surprised. One of the most interesting – and controversial – findings we’ve uncovered so far has been that the worst-affected sites are often those that have tried to implement a standards-compliant design. By contrast, those that haven’t bothered to adhere to web standards are usually fairly well insulated from IE7-related issues.
When we published this finding on our blog, some people took it to mean that we weren’t advocating standards-compliance. This is, respectfully, a load of old codswallop. The point we were trying to make (no doubt inarticulately) was that many of the sites we’ve studied make only the most basic use of CSS. They largely restrict themselves to styles from the CSS1.0 portfolio, and often use out-dated markup like font tags and antiquated design techniques like nested tables for layout. The net result of this is that they throw IE7 into quirks mode and, as IE7’s quirks mode is largely identical to IE6’s quirks mode, they see little difference in the way that the two browsers present their pages.
By contrast, those sites that have gone some way towards implementing web standards – like the Alliance and Leicester, for example – are usually in need of a little attention. These sites usually employ (relatively) clean markup, make extensive use of the CSS2 spec and implement certain hacks and filters to support different browsers. They also typically feature a well-formed DOCTYPE. These attempts at standards-compliance throw IE7 into strict mode – a mode that has seen significant upgrades in order to meet W3C specs and is therefore quite different to IE6’s equivalent. As a result, the presentation of these site in the two browsers can be quite different. In part two next week we’ll be looking at the reasons why.
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Another browser, another round of hacks.
Forgive me, but I thought the browser wars were over. It seems that, in Microsoft’s mind, going the extra mile to make a “rock-hard” XHTML strict-compliant site just further breaks it. Standards, from Microsoft’s perspective, doesn’t decrease development time; it increases it.
I suggest a revival of Jeffrey Zeldman’s guerilla tactics when the Web Standards Project was first being formed. We need to be more vigilant, and I’m not talking about “World Firefox Day.” I’m talking about big, red messages that display on standards-based sites when viewed with Internet Explorer.
[…] Vitamin Features » Internet Explorer 7: Were you ready? All of the (increasingly few) websites I am responsible for handled the IE7 upgrade without a hitch. How about you? Are you ready for people to start browsing your site in IE 7? (tags: IE7) […]
I’ve got two sites, with virtually identical style sheets (different colours, different header image) and the one listed in my contact section here disappears, except for the background, while the other one - http://vidc.cupe.ca/ - works. Not great, but it works. I can’t figure it out. They’re both hosted by a provider using an old CMS (BackEnd, from ‘03) to which I’ve got only marginal access, but since they’re both running off it, I can’t see why. Anyone?
CW
[…] 另外，推荐阅读Internet Explorer 7: Were you ready?。 […]
@CW
Have you tried MS’s developer toolbar? It is very very handy as you can view every elements properties and outstuff etc. great for IE development.
I used to work for Alliance & Leicester (along with 6000 other people, mind you) and can see how this problem occurred. Like most blue-chips, A&L control the roll-out of Windows updates carefully. There would be no way that an A&L employee would be able to install IE7 while it was still in beta. Certainly, if they had, they would have been breaking all sorts of computer usage policies and would probably have been reprimanded.
That said, as a dedicated professional, I think I would have found other ways of installing IE7 beta (like at home) and would have tried out my site.
The problem here is two-fold, A&L have developers who don’t go the extra mile for their company (I know from experience), but they’re also crippled by managers who don’t understand the problem, don’t care about the problem, and are not interested in fixing the problem before they get shouted at by their seniors.
Thanks Darren.
No, I hadn’t heard of an MS developer toolbar, but I just d/l’d it and I’ll give it a try.
CW
IE7 is only a problem if your stats say it is.
Using Google Analytics, I’ve determined that 2 percent of my IE users are using version 7, while the other 98 percent of that number are using version 6. However, that number is of the 86 percent of total visitors, while the rest are using Firefox.
So, 2 percent of 86 percent of my visitors are using IE7. Until that number gets larger, I won’t even worry about it.
But I will keep my eye on the stats.
FF is a good browser to have but with all the features you have on it lacks the html encoding that internet explorer has and there’s so much more you can do on internet explorer with html then you can with Firefox soorry i prefer my I.E 7 thanks
Good roundup. I’d be very interested in an article that point out common issues between IE6 and IE7 and how to resolve them. I don’t know if anyone found something like that
@Kevin: Stay tuned for part two next week ;-)
Since the release of IE 7, all it has done is increase my time spent on check cross browsers. I can test on IE3 to IE7 now on my systems, but audience is all primarily IE6 still, and will be for a long while I expect.
Still trying to figure out inconsistencies between 6 and 7, and where my problems are going to arise. I would like more info on what those problems are in IE7 though.
[…] A couple of days ago at vitamin.com Simon Griffin posted an article about websites that break on the new Internet Explorer version 7. He made an extensive research through the websites of 100 companies on the FTSE 100 Index in order to see the differences between visualization on Internet Explorer version 6 and version 7. […]
[…] Internet Explorer 7: Were you ready? […]
Quirks mode rules! Down with DOCTYPE!
Very nice article, i agree, that a lot of the sites were not (and still are) ready for the IE7, but i think that building the statistics from the up to down is a wrong way - it reminds me about a lot of times referred “chinese soda lie” that if one percent of chinese would be drinking soda, then conquering this market would make anyone a gazillionaire. =O)
My point is that the most people on the net are still using quirks mode table-based designs, and in that way a lot of the sites are not being affected by the Microsoft’s browser upgrade.
As for the browser itself - its is a good and important upgrade(though still far away from major standard-compliant browsers) to replace that buggy IE6 and make web a better experience.
@hex: wtf? are you talking about?
“…more you can do on internet explorer with html ”
enlighten us, please.
Aside from active-x and other proprietary stuff there isn’t anything I can do in IE that can’t be done in ever other better browser. But there are lots of things I can do that work the first time in everything except IE. To get stuff to work in IE adds probably 2-3 hours minimum for every job.
People need to inform their company accountants that IE dramatically increases the cost of building their website.
Part two of this article - explaining how to fix the problems caused by the introduction of IE7 - is now online.
I’ve just updated from Version 6 to Version 7 today and having copied a Microsoft Works document for use on ebay I cannot find how to paste it. I’m l;ooking for an Edit on the toolbar.Can anyone help a relative beginner please ?
Hey John,
You may have already found the answer to your Dec. 6th question, but just in case…
you basically right-click anywhere on your IE7 toolbar, scroll down to: customize command bar then click on: add or remove commands. Add: EDIT and close. Now, you’ll have to go back to your IE7 and right-click anywhere, make sure that: MENU BAR is checked, if not click on it. This will show: file, edit, view, favorites, tools, and help.
For more info check out:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/community/columns/ie7_toolbar.mspx
I am going crazy trying to view favorites it IE7. I have tons of them and it takes forever to scroll with the new system. Is there a way to change this? Thanks
Ryan says
(on February 4th, 2007 at 1:58 am )
I am going crazy trying to view favorites it IE7. I have tons of them and it takes forever to scroll with the new system. Is there a way to change this? Thanks
You will want to make use of favorite groups and group them together so you can collapse groups of favorites!
petrosyan
Hello, my name is Petro, I liked yours blog, can get acquainted and with mine
I think microsoft is loosing the performance of their product in each and every new versoin. Microsoft is only worrying about the look and feel of the product. I am facing lot of problems with IE7 and VC++.Net. These tools are taking lot of time when u gonna close it.
[…] Assessing the impact of the recent IE release for web designers.read more | digg story […]
[…] Assessing the impact of the recent IE release for web designers.read more | digg story […]
[…] Assessing the impact of the recent IE release for web designers.read more | digg story […]