Internet Explorer 8

Posted by Mattias Sandström on March 5, 2009

Another browser en route from Microsoft - Internet Explorer 8 (IE8)... What does it mean for a developer of web-based software?

Before starting this post, I took a moment to review the logs of www.virtualtester.com to see which browsers are requesting our pages. The rumors on the Internet is that there are still quite many users still browsing with Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and this shows in the current statistics where about 19% of the users accessing the site are using IE6! This is about the same number (18%) as Firefox users. IE7 is well in the lead with 53%.

In preparation for the release of IE8 (currently available in RC1 version for the moment with no official release date) we decided to test our applications, the VirtualTester and HelpDeskPRO for compatibility with IE8 and we sure have some work to do! Two major concerns:

1. The current version of the Dojo Toolkit breaks in IE8
2. Rendering of text and images has slightly changed

Thankfully IE8 provides a “Compatibility View” that addresses both of these problems, but that is only feasible as an interim solution. The products must be ready for IE8 when that is browser is released.

Problem 1: Dojo 1.1.1 breaks in IE8
The most problems we see is with the Dojo toolkit. We are running version 1.1.1 of the toolkit and tried to upgrade to a more recent 1.2.x version but most of the pages broke and we did not have the time available to look further into this and thus reverted back to the 1.1.1 version. Clearly we need to spend some time on this and find a solution.

Problem 2: Rendering of pictures
We have noted that text and pictures do not align up as they used to do in IE7, the absolute middle option of the pictures is off by a couple of pixels creating miniscule jumps here and there when hovering over links and in menus. There must be some solution to this (maybe some other img-tag argument that needs to be applied).

Testing nightmare
We also see a great deal of fun around the corner testing our applications. Currently we are testing on IE7 and Firefox and on occasion IE6 (mainly when something breaks and is reported back to us). One would hope that the introduction of IE8 will make the percentage of IE6 users to go down and hopefully vanish, but that is not likely to happen soon as there are still huge installations of Windows XP with IE6 installed (the default browser) that are waiting to upgrade to Windows 7 and then get IE8. Furthermore, about 40% of the IE6 users accessing our sites are still on Windows 2000 (which is supported until July 2010). IE8 will introduce another platform for us to test on and we aim to be compatible with IE8 when it released!

What about other browsers?
Interesting enough, support for other browsers (Safari and Opera to name a few) has so far been much easier than supporting all the quirks of IE6. In general we have noticed that if Firefox is showing the pages correctly, Safari will display them correctly.