Silent updates in MSIE
Not only does Microsoft's Internet Explorer seem to look more and more like Google Chrome, it has also decided to follow Chrome's model of silent updates, a move that could be very important to web development in 2012 onwards.
The browser world is surprisingly healthy at present. There are several excellent browsers to choose from, and they are fast, stable, regularly updated to patch over any flaws or security weaknesses, and most importantly from the website developer's viewpoint, they all render websites in roughly the same way and generally comply with the published HTML standards.
The exception, of course, is Microsoft Internet Explorer. Whilst the latest version, MSIE9, fits well alongside Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, it is the earlier versions which are still in widespread use which causes concern for everyone involved. In particular, MSIE6 and MSIE7 do some very strange things with layouts, and are not good at scaling graphics to fit the different sizes of screen which we deal with today. Even IE8 is sadly lacking many styling features of modern browsers. The problem for web developers is that about half of Microsoft's market share is made up of IE8 users, a quarter use the latest version, IE9, and the other quarter are split between MSIE6 and 7.
Building sites which work effectively on all of these versions, as well as other mainstream browsers and a variety of mobile devices, is challenging, but something which we at SKILLZONE have always thought worth doing given that they can represent a sizeable portion of your target audience. However, it is time consuming, and a concern for all professional web developers.
In response to this problem, Microsoft is to begin rolling out silent updates to the browser so that when your PC does its periodic check for Windows updates, you will automatically be updated to the latest version of MSIE which is available for your hardware. What this means is that anyone using Windows XP should be automatically upgraded to IE8, whilst anyone using Vista or Windows 7 will be upgraded to IE9. Unfortunately, Microsoft has chosen not to make IE9 available for Windows XP, thinking this will encourage people to upgrade their computers to Windows 7, (which of course means more revenue for Microsoft). Instead it encourages XP users to upgrade to the more advanced Firefox or Chrome browsers which run perfectly well on the XP platform, are fast, stable, and give excellent HTML standards compliance.
The silent upgrades will begin in January in Brazil and Australia, and other countries will be added in due course. Whilst this move may cause some upheaval for support staff, from a website developer's viewpoint it will be good to know that the older browsers which don't adhere to modern standards are finally being phased out.
19th December 2011
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.