IE7
Ivan | Sat, 2005-06-18 17:15Have you ever built a site with valid code that looks great on modern browsers just to find out that it falls apart in IE6? Has debugging took you more time than you spent on building the valid site?
IE7 loads and parses all style sheets into a form that Explorer can understand. You can then use most CSS2/CSS3 selectors without having to resort to CSS hacks.
The lightweight script is a single-line inclusion in your HTML/XML document. No alteration of your original markup is necessary. Neither do you have to alter your CSS.
Remember this is alpha software.
Thanks Ivan :D !!!
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Goo
This recent fascination with "valid code" is a bunch of monkey piss. A "valid" site doesn't look any different than a non-valid site depending on the browser you use – so being valid is pretty much irrelevant since there will always be more than one type of web browser.
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Validation is just a tool. It tells you when you're making stupid markup mistakes. It tells you when something probably won't work the way it should. Use it if you want. Or don't.
You're right though: there will always be more than one type of browser. So why not work to make sure that in the future each one can understand the content on your pages and provide it to the user in as simple a manner as possible? If all pages are marked up with according to some standards, then browsers that understand those standards aren't going to have to guess at how to present the information of those pages.
I wonder why you wouldn't want to write valid markup. I mean, what's it hurt? It might not be immediately more useful, but why not make things as simple as possible?
Web standards and Validation are just there for code to be written the way it should be . Non validating websites are created by people who (no offense here) dont really care about their site and the visitors in the future.
I was once told a great way of understanding web standards, validating and why clients should know about it.
When you buy a car it will probably work and run fine but for lets say for instance that it didnt pass its mot because the mechanic only knows a certain way of building a car, it works for him and maybe some of his friends.
Now, think of standards as a checklist of points that should be followed in order for your web site to be safe (just like a car mot).
i recommend that people who consider web standards unimportant to do some research. You will hopefully (like me) find that when you build the site to standards that everything goes together quicker and easier. And your clients will be happy to know that their website hasnt been built by cowboys who can knock up something that works for certain group of people, but a professional who truely cares for the medium that they work with.
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Goo
Hear hear! I've been passed up for freelance jobs in favor of somebody else (usually somebody the client knows) and I go back a couple of months later and see the results: it's halfassed at best, doesn't validate, and often breaks in Safari.
Web browser stats from w3 schools
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
I think the major browsers are quite predictable to develop for, later Opera browsers are getting strong on rendering too ... ... but FireFox is up to 26%!!
I wonder how people who use Netscape 4 is surfing the web?!
One selfishly good thing about valid code is that, one day some smarta** is going to look at your code and point out all your flaws (if you dont have valid code) and that smarta** I mean might take your job.
Besides, learning more about what you do makes you look like a pro.
The world cares not if you have an extra div tag on your home page. We all know that as long as MS has the marketshare majority, standards will never be taken seriously by anoyone other than us ubergeeks.
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If you go for public sector contracts (i'm in the UK) then validation is a must. The museum community in particular (& not just the geeks) is very big on validated code as they want to be sure any public money invested now is well spent, and it aint if you are designing websites for single browsers.
On a personal level I find that its much quicker to initially develop a website using valid code as its much easier to target where problems are starting to arise. Thats why I always leave testing on IE till last, because if I know a website is working across the "standards based" browsers then its usually a quick fix to sort IE bugs.
AS for MS market share, its a sure fire way to leave yourself out in the cold if you rely on the market share of one company for a living, things can very quickly change...
So to summarise, using valid code:
- Can make devlopment quicker.
- Means your work will be widely accessible now & into the future.
- Can create extra work opportunities for yourself.
- Doesn't tie you into a precarious market share situation.
Sounds like a good idea to me ;)
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www.theanthillsocial.co.uk
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im in the uk too, and I cant believe how many clients know about validation. The UK has been hit hard (thank goodness!).
Back in 2002 I went for a job at Bexley (near london) Council, and they was asking for people who knew about validated code and standards way back then!
As far as im concerned... Validated and standards coding is the only way to go, unless you are getting crap money and its an awful client. In which case just do whats quickest.
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Goo
I hate to say it, but I think MS is starting to pay more attention to us ubber geeks.
- Jeff Yamada
www.suborior.com
I was so happy when i came across this thing - the thing that puts me off the most of web design with CSS (oh and i LOVE IT ) is having to make it pretty on IE - sadly, we cannot turn our backs to +85% of web users, and depending on your site, 100% of your own focus group.
If i have to make a site and the client wants XYZ and implementing that will mean that it wont validate, im sad to say that it doesnt matter. You cant tell your client -NO, it doesnt validate, forget it.
This baby is the aspirin of css web designers ;)
Why they named this "IE 7" is beyond me. Of all the names they could have used.
Really, it's like they're just trying to confuse people. The first time I'd heard of it, I though there was an actual public (or leaked) alpha of IE7. So gullible.
Has anybody here actually used it though? Anybody know how well it works? That's what's really important, and I don't think anybody's even mentioned it so far.
I am as much a fan of the validation issue as the next guy, but can we get some reviews of IE7? Anybody out there have anything to report? When Ivan says most of the css selectors, what doesn't work? Let's get some reviews!
I think that most of you are missing the point here.
Valid code, web standards and the separation of style (CSS) from content (XHTML) can save web designers a huge amount of time and effort. It makes your pages compatible with multiple devices — not just those that exist now, but those that will appear next year and the year after. It also makes pages much more accessible for those with low vision and the physically impaired.
The vast majority of web designers' headaches and sleepless nights stem from the fact that people have been using browsers (mostly IE) which don't render pages properly (according to web standards). I reckon they were built this way to accommodate our useless code. We now spend 50% of our time fixing pages for IE, hacking code and implementing fancy work-arounds. This is what we get for using sloppy code to build sloppy pages.
We should be encouraging clients to be forward thinking and build their sites for today and tomorrow, not for 1997. It's not an easy sell, but neither is it for the architect who insists the building has four emergency staircases instead of two. Explain all the benefits to the client and most of them will go for it. Read Jeffrey Zeldman's "Designing With Web Standards". It's a really good introduction to web standards and makes it easy to understand the benefits of moving to a more professional XHTML/CSS work-flow.
Anyway... enough preaching :)
One of the biggest problems with XHTML/CSS/standards right now is that designers get frustrated when all their code falls apart in IE5 & IE6. They either turn to the dark side and go back to coding with tables or they have to spend every hour of their spare time reading about CSS hacks, work-arounds and fixes. Then they criticise CSS because they feel that they have just moved from one set of headaches to another.
The IE7 code is a God-send because it removes (a lot of) the obstacles to a proper standards based work-flow. Obviously, it would be even better if Microsoft got off their backsides and released a standards-compliant browser. But until then, IE7 looks like a good temporary solution.
So I just tried IE7 out, and I ... I don't think it's doing anything. Am I doing something wrong? I've pasted this into make page from the readme:
{!-- compliance patch for microsoft browsers --}{!--[if lt IE 7]}{script src="/ie7/ie7-standard-p.js" type="text/javascript"}{/script}{![endif]--}(with angled instead of curly brackets, of course) and fixed the path to a relative one and I got nothing. What's the deal with those comment tags, anyway? They're, uhm, wrong. Do they actually do something in IE?
*sigh*