Distorted Websites

With release of Internet Explorer 8, expect some wonky websites

Cargo businesses vexed by the relentless need to continually tweak their Web sites for multiple browsers have a new challenge: the 2009 release of Internet Explorer 8, which is expected to wreak havoc on some Web sites.

Apparently, I.E.’s roll-out, which began in mid-March, “may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended,” according to Nick MacKechnie, a senior technical account manager for Microsoft.

Granted, the impending disruption probably would have been even worse in the heyday of Internet Explorer, when the browser was pretty much the only game in town.

But even without complete market dominance, the changeover is expected to have a major impact. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of all PCs still used Internet Explorer as of December, 2008, according to a study by market watcher Net Applications (www.netapplications.com).

And while rival browsers are gaining steadily, they’re still far back in the pack. Firefox, Microsoft’s primary challenger, still only has a 21 percent market share, according to NA’s study. The Safari browser clocks in at just under 8 percent, while Google’s much-touted Chrome browser barely makes a blip, with just 1 percent of market share.

“With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO.

Ironically, the anticipated problems with I.E. 8 are the result of a fundamental shift at Microsoft. In a marked about-face, the company has decided to adhere to Web design standards set by the Web design community with the latest version of I.E. That’s a major break from its previous stance, which was bullying designers into accepting I.E. as the de facto global standard.

Long term, Microsoft’s change of heart is expected to reap savings for Web designers and cargo companies. Coders will be able to spend more time designing and less time making special tweaks for I.E. Standards-compliant sites are expected to take less revenue to produce, download quicker and be easier to optimize for search engines.

Still, getting from here to there will be a tad painful.

“What’s going to happen is that a lot of sites coded for I.E. will not work in I.E. 8,” said Jeffrey Zeldman, author of “Designing With Web Standards,” second edition, and a globally recognized standards guru. “Not only will layouts look wonky; scripting will also change.”
In common parlance, this means all those request-for-quote forms you may use on your cargo site could stop working. Web site forums and feedback forms may also cause some trouble. And much of the rich media you may be using may simply stop working.
Added a blunt Zeldman: “If you write I.E.-only scripts, your site will break.”

Cargo firms that regularly use applications requiring access via a Web portal could also be in for headaches. The sites providing Web-based apps could also stop working properly, and could take weeks or months to fix by the service providers who decide to play catch up rather than be pro-active about I.E. 8’s roll-out.

The take-away? Unearthing how bad the carnage will be at your own site will hinge on your Webmaster’s design philosophy. Sites based primarily on Web standards and only tweaked for the previous version of I.E may only face extremely minor problems if any. But sites specifically designed to work in previous versions of I.E., with no regard to Web standards whatsoever, could face major snafus.
Fortunately, Microsoft does have a short-term quick fix for the afflicted. “We have provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7,” MacKechnie said. “Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes.”

Firms that would rather not deal with a dead-of-the-night automatic update to I.E. 8 on their PCs can stop that change in its tracks with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Blocker Toolkit (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21687628-5806-4ba6-9e4e-8e224ec6dd8c&displaylang=en).

Once protected, all PCs using the blocker above will remain on I.E. 7 until the organization decides to upgrade. The best bet is to install the blocker ASAP. As many of us have learned the hard way, once installed, Microsoft’s automatic updates are often tough to reverse, and in some cases, irreversible.

The long-term solution to the I.E. 8 release will be for every cargo business to design and maintain sites based on standards created by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C the globally recognized Web standards body, according to Zeldman.

Not surprisingly, many industry sites are already W3C compliant, and most likely will not be among the distorted as I.E. 8 rolls out. Southwest Cargo’s Web site (http://www.swacargo.com/swacargo/footer-Accessibility.shtml), for example, pledges to adhere to W3C standards, as does Famous Logistics (http://www.fpsqld.net.au/track-your-cargo.html) and the Kuantan Port Authority (http://www.lpktn.gov.my/portal-eng/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=45).

Fortunately, the W3C offers two free online tools that validate Web standards compliance, one for HTML (http://validator.w3.org/), and another for CSS (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css- validator/) acronyms instantly recognizable to any designer.

Zeldman has also released his own Web Standards Advisor validator, designed to work with Dreamweaver, one of the more popular Web authoring tools. “The Web Standards Advisor is great for the designer who is climbing aboard the Web standards design train,” Zeldman said. “But it’s also surprisingly useful for the advanced coder. I found mistakes in my own Web site,” with the tool, he added.
Additional help is also offered by Microsoft, which has released a cornucopia of online tools created to help companies understand, adapt to, and monitor I.E. 8’s coming roll-out. Those include:

• Internet Explorer 8 main site (http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8)

• Internet Explorer Team Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie)

• Internet Explorer Developer Center (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx)

• Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit for Web designers and developers
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm)

• Microsoft Interoperability Principles:  (http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx)





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