How to Prepare for the New Browser Generation
Good news everyone!
Microsoft’s web browser Internet Explorer 9 was released in the early hours of this morning, to much excitement … no that’s not the word … anyway, it’s been released and there’s nothing we can do about it. In many ways it is a good thing as the browser standards are far better than its predecessor IE8, and the version before that, and especially the version before that, however it would be naive of anyone not to expect any problems with a new release of Internet Explorer. I was horrified when viewing TwentyTen in the Beta of IE9 as it didn’t render correctly – yes the default theme of the most widely used website platform on the web – however this was fixed by the beta stage.
It’s Not Only You who is Annoyed
We can complain about IE until the cows come home, but there are two things that can make the whole transition a lot easier:
- Pre-empt your clients’ complaints
A sensible thing to do is to warn your clients of the possible rendering issues with a new browser release, as it is better they hear it from you with your justifications for paying for any changes rather than them come to you with a problem that they blame you for, however unjustified that is. - Use a quick fix
Like everything in web development/life there is a right way and a quick way of doing things. If you’re very bored/short of work/insane then you could spend a good half a day per client fixing any rendering issues by making markup changes, however if the site in question renders in IE8 (or 7 I suppose) there is a quick fix that will force Internet Explorer into version 8′s rendering engine:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8">
Place this meta-tag in your site’s head and Hey Presto your site will render as if IE 9 had never been released!
I’m not aware of any such fix for Firefox but I’ve been using the Beta of the soon to be released Firefox 4 for several months and haven’t noticed any rendering issues, or seen them reported by any other developers. A good general policy with browsers is to specify in your terms and conditions what browsers the website you are producing will work in, as assumptions will be made by the client that it will work in any browser, be it one that hasn’t been released or one that just won’t die.
#postaweek2011 6/52
