Potentially more exciting than the arrival of a new phonebook is the planned automatic update of Microsoft's web browser, Internet Explorer. 
If you haven't already heard about it--and I'm sure that most of you have--Microsoft is planning to release the first major upgrade to Internet Explorer since IE6 in 2001. With many new features, security upgrades, and changes to the core software itself, it's a totally new browser that will suddenly be the primary browser of a good 70% or more of your audience. Is your site ready for that? If you don't know for sure, now's the time to find out.
...Virtually overnight, you'll find most of your site visitors have made the switch...
At some point during the next few months (the fourth quarter of this year,) Microsoft will be rolling out this upgrade as a high-priority, automatic update. That means that most Windows XP users will simply be online one day when they'll receive a popup alert from the system tray saying that updates are ready for their computer. Virtually overnight, you'll find most of your site visitors have made the switch.
This all seems straightforward enough until you consider someone like my father. My father is in his 70s. He browses the 'Net daily. If presented with the option to install a security update, he has been trained to click accept (without trying to comprehend what specifically it is patching). If he accepts this and suddenly his browser experience changes (sites that used to render properly no longer work) he'll be completely confused. He wouldn't know how to uninstall.
- Tom Raftery IE7 + Automatic Update = support nightmare
Frankly, this is true for the majority of your users. Like it or not, once the change is made, there'll be no going back. Certain questions then arise:
- What will they see when they go to your site?
- Should you panic?
- Will you need to recode?
- Are you ready for the new toys? (Didn't expect that last one, did you.)
Let's have a look at what this change will mean for your site.
Things to Be Happy About
...an open opportunity to provide new services and gain a larger audience...
Those of us that routinely use other browsers or check our sites out in multiple browsers will find a lot of very familiar things integrated into IE7. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm happy for the changes and improvements they've made, but on the other, I find it annoying that a majority of non-technically-oriented web users will think of these as Microsoft innovations rather than Microsoft trying to catch up with everyone else's innovations. Still, there is a lot to be happy about in this upgrade. Some of it--like improved web standards and CSS support--might require changes for some sites (That's a good thing, really.) and some of it--like RSS integration--are an open opportunity to provide new services and gain a larger audience.
Tabbed Browsing
That's right, tabbed browsing has finally made its way to Internet Explorer (boldly going where everyone else has been for quite some time.) If you're like me and you regularly have to have a number of applications running simultaneously and then additionally have to open several different browsers to compare page layouts, then you'll truly appreciate this addition. I can finally have ONE window of Internet Explorer open with a number of web pages displayed in different tabs (as I always could in other browsers.)
My only regret here is that there's not yet a good, all-purpose, cross-browser compatible script to automatically open external links in new tabs rather than new windows. This would make a nice addition to Paul Boag's External Links script that I (like many others) use so extensively. However, I'm sure that one will come along eventually.
RSS Integration
...That's practically an unsolicited advertisement for viewing your feed...
This is truly an awesome feature. I know that it's already been a standard part of other browsers, but, because 70% to 90% of your users are surfing the web with nothing but Internet Explorer, the sudden ability to read and subscribe to RSS feeds right in their browser will be a totally new experience. If your site already has an RSS feed, then now's the time to start planning how you might promote it to a more main-stream audience as well as how you might make it a more prominent part of your pages. If your site doesn't, then now's the time to start working on one.
The feed button for IE7 remains grayed out and inactive while viewing pages without a recognizable feed (RSS1, RSS2, Atom, etc.) and then springs to vivid, orange life when viewing a page that has one. I don't know about you, but I'd like it to be one of MY sites that a user first notices this strange new button on. You know it has to be tried at least once just to see what it does, and what it does is tell your users that there's even more content available from your site then they may have ever been aware of otherwise.
The drop-down list of available feeds and feed types next to the button is a potential source of confusion for non-technical users, but most will simply click the main button and get the topmost, default feed. Upon clicking it, however, they get not only a new feed page, but some helpful information about feeds and how to use them. My favorite part, though, is the bolded statement in the yellow box that says, "You are viewing a feed that contains frequently updated content." That's practically an unsolicited advertisement for viewing your feed. I really have to thank Microsoft for including that.
Between all the browsers that I've tried (Firefox, Opera, and IE7) and all the feed readers I've tried out (including Outlook 2007 RSS) nothing beats the simplicity and ease of reading feeds of IE7.
- Greg Kniffin RSS Feed Readin' - IE7 is king
They've even gone a step further and added a sidebar allowing users to sort or filter your feed by date, title, author, and even category. These categories, by the way, are the ones you've assigned to each piece of feed content. A little careful forethought in this department could net you some permanent, new site users viewing your content and, more especially, your membership reminders--especially if you pad every RSS "post" with a membership link.
Extensibility
...This misguided approach froze it into being a passive browser...
One of the problems that Internet Explorer has always had was its inherent lack of extensibility. It was a proprietary, Microsoft application meant to do only what Microsoft had in mind when they shipped it--nothing more. This misguided approach froze it into being a passive browser. Firefox, with its numerous extensions, changed all that along with everyone's concept of what a browser could be and what it can do.
With IE7, Microsoft has seen the light of following this approach, and they're not stepping in with nothing either. They're starting right out with some heavy-hitters, two of which immediately caught my eye, the Developer Toolbar--the Internet Explorer answer to Chris Pederick's indispensable Web Developer add-in for Firefox--and Fiddler which is an HTTP Debugger that lets you fiddle around in that particular pot of code.
Of course, it remains to be seen if they can harness the kind of voluntary developer community that Firefox has, but they are off to a good start. At least this kind of "raising the bar" back and forth between the various browsers will continue to benefit all of us out here in the trenches.
Security Features
After taking it on the chin for ages, Microsoft has gotten downright serious with security--perhaps a little overboard in some ways--but serious nonetheless. One of the better aspects of this new security consciousness is their phishing filter. IE7 will block access to (or at least warn you about) fake sites that pretend to be trusted sites in order to get you to reveal private information, download malignant software, or just look around while it loads crap onto your computer in the background.
None of the phishing features in IE7 appears to cause problems with legitimate Web sites. I tested all the features in both application suites in all environments, without once running afoul of this particular feature. In fact, developers should be happy about this feature, because it means that nefarious individuals are less likely to hijack users that are coming to your Web site.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
IE7 defaults to blocking most pop-ups now. As an underhanded advertising method, this is better dropped anyway, but, as a legitimate method of delivering small pieces of extra content like program information or auction item windows, this might require a little rethinking. It's also more aggressive about cookies. A good P3P Privacy Policy should prevent most problems of this nature.
It also has safeguards in place to protect against old or inappropriate SSL certificates. If yours is out of date or contains invalid information, it's time to get that fixed now.
Better CSS Support
After working with the Web Standards Project (WaSP) since July of 2005, believe it or not, IE7 now sports CSS 2.1 compliance. That means that Internet Explorer, still the most popular browser on the planet, has made a major move--at least for Microsoft--toward the world of web standards. It's a start.
With all these major bug fixes in place, there are those of us--myself included--who may have to revisit some of our CSS files to double-check their compatibility with IE7.
If your layout relied on us "growing" the box (if your content did not fit the dimensions you gave it) then this can lead to breaks. You can easily discover breaks related to overflow by observing content suddenly overlapping other content.
- Cascading Style Sheet Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7
Some of the CSS hacks we've been using for awhile are no longer valid. I'm sure new ones will come into play. Currently, the Star-HTML hack is still okay, but others may not fair so well. It's worth running through their posted list and checking for any hacks you may have used. Frankly, it's just time to move away from that whole way of coding. (I'm saying that for my benefit since I'm sure that you already knew that.)
After all this, they still treat ALT text as a tooltip. Will someone please tell them that that's a bug and not a feature. I'm so tired of it.
PNG Support
Real PNG support and everything that goes with it has finally made it to Internet Explorer.
You can now display Portable Network Graphics (PNG) images without relying on odd workarounds to implement transparency. However, some older features are also gone. If you rely on the Dynsrc attribute of the <IMG> tag, you'll need to change your Web page, because it no longer works in IE7.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more sites taking advantage of the real power inherent in PNG images. The combined use of lossless graphics images with layered transparencies and semi-transparencies can not only create stunningly vivid pages but, with a little imagination, whole new ways of presenting content.
Things to Worry About
Although most sites tend to look the same in IE7 as they did in IE6, there are some potential problems. Most of these have to do with site applications (like shopping carts and such) and the use of ActiveX controls. John Mueller outlined these in detail on the DevSource website, and I really encourage you to take the time to read through all five parts of his article on Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7, because I'm only scratching the surface here.
Don't wait until Microsoft releases IE7 to begin testing your applications. Based on what I've seen so far, unless you're using pretty much pure HTML on static pages, your application is going to break in some way.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
ActiveX Problems
I don't know if anyone else remembers it this way, but I seem to recall that ActiveX was developed by Microsoft as an extension of OLE back in the mid to late 90's and pushed as an incredible new way to make the web work directly with your already existing desktop applications--especially the Microsoft ones. Now, in a bizarre turn of events, they're trying to protect users from their own creation.
After having seen many examples of just how bad malignant ActiveX controls can get, Microsoft finally decided to add some protection for users in IE7. Unfortunately, this halfway measure doesn't really help anyone. Users will be annoyed by having to OK every ActiveX control, every time one appears on a Web page.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
If you haven't done it already, lose the ActiveX reliance. It's just going to be more and more of a problem over time.
Since most other browsers (including Firefox) ignore ActiveX controls, you might want to phase out use of ActiveX in your applications. They were always a bad idea. Unfortunately, this one change is going to break many applications; everything from shopping carts to data collaboration.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
Header Information & Range Checking
If you've gone out of your way to provide appropriate content to your users based on the browser he or she is using or whether or not a specific plugin is available, then you're to be commended. You went above and beyond the call of duty for the sake of your users. Unfortunately, you may now have more work to do.
A check of the request header information that IE7 provides shows that some applications will break when they employ poor range-checking methods. My test system shows that IE7 supports nine file types by default... The user agent information is also different... If your application checks for specific version numbers, rather than a range of numbers, it may stop working with IE7.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
Multiple Home Pages
This is kind of a weird thing to get used to and you may not think of it as something to worry about. The idea here is that you can have more than one home page, and they'll all open up in separate tabs of which you can set the order.
...I still think that the real opportunity is in the RSS integration...
While that's all well and good, I can easily picture a lot of web developers running out and dusting off their old "Make this your homepage" JavaScript link. I tested this in IE7 Beta 3, and yes it does still work. If you click on one of these links, it will bring up an "Add or Change Home Page" dialog box. This will allow you make that page your only home page or add it to your home page tabs. So what's the matter with that, you may ask. Well, frankly, familiarity breeds contempt.
I, personally, don't want my pages associated with anything that can clog up a user's experience online. Setting three or four homepages won't really impact broadband users, but dialup users will see significant delays in just being able to get started when they open IE7. The usual reaction to that is to blame the last page that was added, and I don't want that to be my page. There's also the problem of incomplete page rendering if an impatient dialup user (Name one that isn't.) starts browsing in another tab while your page is still loading.
All in all, I'm planning to avoid encouraging the use of my pages as home pages. It's not really the opportunity that it might seem to be. Instead of that, I plan to create content that users will want to come back to again and again and even add to their favorites or bookmarks. I still think that the real opportunity is in the RSS integration.
Some Final Words
...If users make this change and begin seeing broken pages, they'll blame the browser...
With all of that said about this changeover, you might be wondering about how you can check your site out. Well, to be honest, the two main methods are only available to customers running genuine Microsoft Windows. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't want to help non-Windows-based web developers to get their sites ready for IE7. That makes no sense to me since they should want the majority of websites that their customers have been using to continue to work in their new-and-improved browser. If users make this change as planned and begin immediately seeing broken pages, then they'll blame the browser, not the web developer.
Anyway, the two main tools are the Internet Explorer 7 Readiness Toolkit and simply downloading the latest release candidate of IE7. If you can stand the wait time and their servers aren't too overwhelmed, then you might want to check out BrowserShots.org to get screen shots of your pages in multiple browsers including IE7.
I'm going to let John Mueller sum up what he calls "The Bottom Line" of all of this.
You might think that all of these changes are a pain. In many respects, you're right. However, the changes really are necessary. Creating a secure internet (or at least one where you don't have to walk on eggshells) is everyone's responsibility. The changes you make to update your Web site to IE7 will benefit everyone. The user benefits from added security, enhanced privacy protection, and improved features. Your company benefits from fewer attacks and reduced support requirements. You'll benefit from those extra weekends you get to spend at home, rather than at the office. Unfortunately, to get all of these benefits, you'll need to spend time now fixing the things that caused the problems in the first place.
- John Mueller Making Your Apps work with Internet Explorer 7
Thank you all, code well, and good night.
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Nice to see you posting again, ptvGuy. Good article.
Yes, ActiveX was an extension of OLE2. It became a specific implementation of COM. It grew out of the ability to write custom controls for VB, and Internet Explorer allowed similar controls to be embedded on web pages. Very dangerous, because it has full access to local machine resources (given the privileges of the user). I remember one naysayer in the early days posting a web page that contained an ActiveX control that would reboot your computer, just to show how vulnerable you could be.
Thanks, Chip. And, since you brought it up and you have so much expertise to offer, how do you find time to care for all your clients, take care of all the day to day stuff of life, and still run several blogs?
BTW, I also remember those ActiveX vulnerability pages–some of which are still around. My favorite from years ago was one that offered a button to remake your computer into a “Redneck Pooter.” It would pop open your CD drive and flash a message saying that you now had a cup-holder for your beer.
Good one. I only have two blogs, and only post to one of them daily.
ptvguy,
thanks for the link and the great article.
By the way, I have been using the multiple homepages feature in Firefox and Flock for some time now and find it a great way to get all my regular pages opened quickly!
Timothy -
I was under the impression that the main reason for the change in ActiveX behavior was the patent dispute with Eolas and not because of any real security concern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas
Is that not the case?
Tom: One of the very few advantages that Internet Explorer has always had over Firefox was its quick startup. That may disappear as it too begins making greater use of extensions that may slow it down initially. However, since public television station websites tend to be rather graphics heavy-promoting as they do a visual medium-they will tend to slow things down for dialup users. I should have mentioned that there are sites with a majority of broadband users who may choose to actively pursue homepage promotion.
Dave: While it is true that the Eolas suit forced Microsoft to use the “Click to activate” method to sidestep the patent issue, ActiveX has always been a serious security problem. There are just too many ways to directly access and control various aspects of a user’s computer through ActiveX controls–everything from memory allocation to specific file manipulation. It actually should have been dealt with a long time ago.
Thanks for posting this. It is a great overview of the changes to come. Well done.
ptv, the ability to open external links in Firefox has been available for quite some time. I regularly click on links from within my instant messenger application and Firefox opens them in a new tab just fine.
Joseph, that sounds more like setting Firefox as your default browser. Both Firefox and IE7 will open new tabs automatically when you click a hyperlink from an external application like your email or instant messaging. My particular lament has to do with creating hyperlinks in my own web pages and not having a good, all-purpose, crossbrowser-compatable script to trigger them to open a new tab rather than a new window.
Unlike Lachlan Hunt, I believe that there ARE times when it’s acceptable to have a link open externally–especially in the case of a blog or forum where unknown users are liable to post just about any kind of link you can imagine. There also cases in my articles where I’ve cited examples from other sites, quoted from other authors, or just put a link in for the convenience of the reader. I’ve taken the time to warn users when a link will open a new window, but, given the choice, I would rewrite that script to open in a new tab rather than a whole new window.
I have Firefox set to open all links from web pages that have an external target in a new window. It even does that (most of the time) for pop-up windows that I click on links for.
link to a screenshot showing the setting in firefox
I do the same thing in both Firefox and IE7. However, that isn’t the default setting. Most computer users leave all their programs set at default settings; therefore, it’s best to design for defaults. It tends to be only people who’ve changed their settings (such as you and I) who actually understand that those behaviors can be controlled from the client end. The vast majority of users on the web believe that the web pages they view do only what the web developer designed them to do (or failed to design them to do.)
One of my previous posts listed this exact same problem with Norton Internet Security. The default spam settings block certain content from web pages and leave users assuming that the web developer simply left something out.
If users have set external page links to open in new tabs in their browsers–which I think is the best way–then my externalLink script will open in a new tab. Otherwise it will open in a new window as designed. I’d still prefer to automatically open a new tab instead, but such an all-purpose script would have to deal not only with how the browser triggers tab openings, but what extensions are installed that might interfere with that. I don’t expect a good solution any time soon.
We already have a good solution, though. Our blogs, where we can educate readers (both the technical and non-technical alike) about the software they use. Useability guidelines, such as those for the blind, will always fail unless users and developers alike are fully informed.
Great article, thanks! I wanted to try out the RSS feature, but am having problems with it already. I added the code below to my site and it worked fine locally, but when I upload it doesn’t do anything. Is this feature supposed to be working properly?
for some reason the code isn’t showing up, but I followed the specs from the IE 7 toolkit and it doesn’t work once uploaded.
Joseph: I agree with you in principle, but the reality is that the majority of web users look at surfing the Internet in the same way I look at using my car. I don’t know anything about cars. I put gas in it, and I expect it to go where I want. If it doesn’t work, I want it fixed. I don’t want lectures about oil changes or what I should do to take care of it, and I’m certainly not interested in reading them. I’m perfectly fine with everything under the hood being a mystery to me. That’s how people surf the web, and that’s why I write (primarily) for web developers and not web users.
Dave: I’m not sure what coding you’re refering to since it was stripped out of the comment. I’m currently looking for a good way to display code from comments here without parsing it, but the security features on WordPress 2.0.4 are pretty strict about preventing most code in comments. (That’s a good thing, BTW.) If you send it to me through my contact form, I’ll be able to give you much better feedback on it.
As far as trying the RSS feature in IE7, it shouldn’t require any extra coding at all beyond the creation of a valid XML feed and a link to it on the page. IE7 spots the link in the page as it’s rendered and does the rest for you.
Dave: I fixed the code display problem.
type="application/rss+xml"title="WRCJ Events Feed"
href="http://www.detroitpublictv.org/wrcj/rss/events.xml"
/>
I just added the “link” tag inside the header as the IE 7 toolkit suggested. When I preview locally the feed icon lights up and everything is great. When I upload the file the feed icon stays grey.
ptvguy: You and I definitely have different ideas about the experience had on the web. I for one am all for demystifying any technology, the Internets being first and foremost as it is, without a doubt, fastly becoming the most popular medium for sharing ideas of all sorts (even ones you and I would certainly disagree with). I would rather educate users where as you’d rather have more guidelines. I wish I could say I’ve been keeping up with your blog (moreso then just the comments) but my net access is limited to 65 minute increments a day (from a public library) and will be for the foreseeable future.
Yes, the designer should try to accomodate all possible experiences but that is getting harder and harder to do. With your experiences with Norton Internet Security (seemingly another Norton product I am glad I don’t use) and other people’s experiences with proxies and the like, it would probably be the best route to take a “meet me in the middle approach”.
Dave: I tested your code exactly as you entered it here, and it works fine. It’s a valid feed, and it lights the feed button in IE7 right up. My guess is that your frameset arrangement is interfering with the link. Try putting it in the HEAD section of the root page, and let me know what happens.
BTW, tag your feeds for easy sorting. This will allow users to look for just piano events or just Jazz events, etc., etc. Also, don’t be shy about throwing a membership link right onto the end of every event item in your feed. You can hard-code it to appear automatically in the feed right before the close ITEM tag.
Joseph: I wouldn’t say that we disagree nor that I want more guideleines. (See my article on the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.) I expect people who charge for web development to know what they’re doing or to find out before they accept payment. I hope that users will become more educated about the technology of the web, but I don’t demand it of them.
I picture the future of the web with developers putting usability, accessibility, and user exerience first until it becomes as easy to use as a television or a microwave oven–and requires just about as much knowledge from the user. Users of such devices know that there are numerous bells and whistles available to them and will even study up on them if they decide that they need that, but, for the most part, they just want to switch it on, get what they want, and be done with it.
I do agree, web developers should know what they are doing (or what they are getting themselves into) but I still am more inclined to a “meet me in the middle” approach.
I do admit though to having a certain tendancy to gadget-geekery and finding out how to fully use my devices, I imagine that really pours over into my views when it comes to web design.
Shame on Microsoft for forcing IE7 in an automatic update. This is causing headaches for Web Developers around the world. Many of us do not have to time to go through everything and make sure it’s all OK. But we do anyways, because we know what can happen when things go bad. I curse them for creating extra work for us right around the holidays.
Nothing gets the holidays going like a good curse.
The real shame, I think, comes in forcing that whole Genuine Windows Advantage thing into the package. There’s a whole lot of people out there right now (businesses included) that are discovering that the operating system that “came with their computer” was of somewhat questionable origin.
New holiday plans for many people will now include getting a REAL copy of Windows for their computers so they can download IE7 so they can see what (if anything) needs to be fixed so they can fix their site that was working fine before so they won’t get complaints or lose customers so they can relax and enjoy the holidays which they’ll suddenly realize they haven’t had any time to shop or prepare for because they were doing all this.
What a season of joy lies ahead…