As Microsoft’s IEBlog announced yesterday (and Jesse posted about), IE7 beta 2 is public. This is the first time I’ve seen it as I was not in the private beta 1 group.
And of course, this is a good thing… but it is also a bad thing. As a web developer, the bane of my existence has been IE. IE does not behave according to standards. The Microsoft mantra has been that complying fully with established standards would break backwards compatibility of sites created for earlier versions of IE and since they had the market share they could set their own rules. Fortunately, browsers like Firefox and Opera came along and challenged the status quo. They created browsers that do adhere to standards and as web designers have become more aware of the necessity to code websites accordingly, the general quality of the web and browser nuisances have diminshed.
Still, though, IE has always been the problem child. When developing a site, I generally write for standards to get the most bang for my buck from Firefox and Opera (usually Safari on Mac as well) and then go back and execute CSS “hacks” in my stylesheets to force IE into compliance. These hacks are present in almost every site I generate the HTML for. And that’s for Strict mode, not Quirks mode!
Fortunately for the web development world as a whole, IE7 actually leaps forward in compliance and seems to be relatively on par with the other browsers. Unfortunately for me, that means that I need to go find workarounds for all the hacks I’ve dropped in. The hacks are usually simple things that IE sees and interprets but other browsers ignore and, while those are good when dealing primarily with IE6 compliance, they screw things up for IE7 compliance.
Ideally, IE7 would do as other browsers do and ignore the hacks. Hacks are supposed to be ignored. If they were intended interpretations of code, they would not be hacks. In my (albeit short) usage of IE7, I am upset that Microsoft has decided to become standards compliant but yet still allow their browsers to interpret these hacks.
The major items I have found on this site so far are:
height:100%;does not work properly when applied to (at least) a div. 100% renders as 100% of the viewable screen and drops off after scrolling farther down the page. I fixed this by removing the 100% call becasue, really, it wasn’t needed.- IE7 does not render .ico image files. These are the Favicons that are displayed next to commenters names if the site they put in the URL field has a Favicon. I’ve reported this to Microsoft but it doesn’t seem to be something anyone wants to seriously address.
- Finally, a usability issue. I resent Microsoft’s decision to move the Refresh and Stop buttons to new homes in the toolbar breaking the traditional (and familiar!) placement of placing them next to the back/forward buttons. Bad usability!
I need to fix all my sites and sites I have written for people before Microsoft decides to launch IE7 and start pushing it via Windows Update. Fun, fun, fun. As if I did not have enough on my plate as it is.
{ 8 comments }
Nick Gagne 02.01.06 at 9:25 am
There is a css hack that works for all versions of internet explorer, including ie7. You can read about it here:
http://www.ibloomstudios.com/article7/
Nick Gagne 02.01.06 at 9:25 am
There is a css hack that works for all versions of internet explorer, including ie7. You can read about it here:
http://www.ibloomstudios.com/article7/
Vinnie Garcia 02.01.06 at 11:52 am
I’m not going to fix anything for IE7 until it’s a final release (or at least an RC2 or something). Too much can change before then.
I downloaded it yesterday myself. I hate the new UI, but I should be used to Microsoft not adhering to their own guidelines (Office anyone?).
Vinnie Garcia 02.01.06 at 11:52 am
I’m not going to fix anything for IE7 until it’s a final release (or at least an RC2 or something). Too much can change before then.
I downloaded it yesterday myself. I hate the new UI, but I should be used to Microsoft not adhering to their own guidelines (Office anyone?).
supa 02.01.06 at 12:45 pm
ie is the bane of my existence. it hurts me to have to cram hacks and whatnot into code; i hate doing it.
supa 02.01.06 at 12:45 pm
ie is the bane of my existence. it hurts me to have to cram hacks and whatnot into code; i hate doing it.
Aaron 02.01.06 at 2:21 pm
Supa– I’ve gotten pretty efficient with the star-html hack. Very little generally needs to be hacked for IE on my sites but what does usually involves absolute positioning coordinates, height/min-height differences, etc. The problem is I still need those hacks for IE6 to render properly but IE7 processes those same hacks but renders them differently. :\
Nick, I’ll look at your link in a bit.
Aaron 02.01.06 at 2:21 pm
Supa– I’ve gotten pretty efficient with the star-html hack. Very little generally needs to be hacked for IE on my sites but what does usually involves absolute positioning coordinates, height/min-height differences, etc. The problem is I still need those hacks for IE6 to render properly but IE7 processes those same hacks but renders them differently. :
Nick, I’ll look at your link in a bit.
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