ere's the scenario: one Service Pack 2. The move to IE7
morning you open your email among the end-user masses will
and your inbox is flooded not be a gradual migration, but a
with emails that your site isn't sudden and significant shift.”
working properly. Maybe your text
or images don't look right, or One night Windows XP users will
even worse maybe your site isn't go to bed using IE6 and the next
properly processing credit card morning they'll wake up, install
transactions. How could this a routine update, and just like
happen when you didn't change a that they'll be using IE7 to
thing? Well, that morning could browse the web. That means, that
be the morning later this year as a site owner, you need to
that Microsoft releases Internet begin preparing immediately for
Explorer 7. IE7's impending release.
How are people going to get What's different about
IE7? IE7?
According to Kevin Yank in a From a user's perspective,
recent issue of the SitePoint improvements include tabbed
Tech Times browsing, better printing, RSS
(http://www.sitepoint.com/newslet feed integration, more advanced
ter/viewissue.php?id=3&issue=147& searching, and better security
format=html): features, as well as a plethora
of add ons to enhance the user
“Word on the street is that, upon experience (similar to Firefox
its release (before year's end), extensions).
IE7 will be pushed out as a
forced update to Windows XP users However, the most important
everywhere, as was done for changes that will have a more
direct impact on how your site is available before instantiating
loaded and displayed are: the ActiveX control, instead of
the other way around”
RSS integration – IE7
automatically detects RSS feeds Added security features –
and asks you to subscribe. It everything from more secure SSL
also gives you the option to have defaults to disabling most Active
IE7 auto-check for feed updates X controls by default has been
(even when it's not running). Is changed to help make the user's
your feed properly recognized by browsing experience more secure.
IE7? These changes could drastically
change your users browsing and
Updated CSS behavior – the purchasing experience.
IE7 team worked very closely with
the W3C workgroup to ensure You can get full details on all
standards compliance. They made of the changes by visiting the IE
over 200 changes from IE6 to Blog
become compliant with CSS2.1. (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive
Even if your site is standards /category/8680.aspx)
compliant, it may not be rendered
exactly the same as it is in IE6 What you should do?
or Firefox.
The only way to know for sure how
AJAX XMLHTTP Request your site will work in Internet
changes – the IE blog states: Explorer 7 is to download it and
“to have your cross-browser AJAX try. The IE7 team recently
work better with IE7, you really released Internet Explorer 7
should be invoking the native Release Candidate 1 (RC1), which
XMLHttpRequest (the cross-browser can be downloaded on the Internet
one) first to see if it’s Explorer web site
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows In testing my sites there were a
/ie/default.mspx). I'd recommend few instances where my site
downloading IE7 on a computer worked flawlessly in Firefox and
other than your primary machine IE6, but had small problems in
(you still want IE6 on your IE7. The changes I needed to make
primary machine at least until were minimal, but regardless of
IE7 is officially launched). RC1 how well you code there could
is essentially the final version still be some potential problems.
of how IE7 will display sites It's better to find and fix them
when launched, so if your site now than to wake up one morning
passes the test now you'll likely and have hundreds of customer
be OK when IE7 is released for complaints!
real.
About the Author:
Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - web based to-do lists that help people and businesses organize their tasks. Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others.
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Adam McFarland
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