2 Web Standards and IE7 Embracing the Future, Managing the Past

Welcome!

4 History & Contributions Internet Explorer’s Fascinating Past

5 General Background  Internet Explorer’s roots go back to the first popular GUI browser, Mosaic  One of the longest browsers in use, IE is also one of the most widely used browsers  It is estimated that IE, in particular IE6, is used by 1/2 a billion people worldwide  That’s 1/12th of the world’s population!

6 Historical Landmarks  Internet Explorer 3.0 had the most advanced CSS 1 implementation of its time  Internet Explorer 4.0 introduced the most advanced DOM and scripting options for its time  Internet Explorer 5.0 (for the Mac) introduced the Tasman rendering engine, which was the most advanced CSS rendering for its time  Internet Explorer 6.0 introduced DOCTYPE switching, which empowered web authors to choose the rendering mode in which they wanted to work  XMLHttpRequest was introduced by Microsoft, and has grown to form the cornerstone of asynchronous scripting technologies (Ajax)

7 Trouble in Paradise?  IE 6.0, at its release, is a strong standards browser  Security concerns started to come to the public eye  After several years, it was clear that the lack of a browser update was severely affecting designers, developers and perhaps most painfully - end users  Spyware, malware, endless pop-ups and other disconcerting problems influenced the rise of “alternative” browsers such as Mozilla Firefox

8 The Five Year Wait  Despite these problems, Microsoft at first determines that no future standalone browser will be developed  Instead, the browser was to be fully integrated into what we now know as Windows Vista  However, security concerns and public outcry from standards-oriented developers via blogs, the Web Standards Project and other community platforms encouraged Microsoft to review its browser plans

9 IE7  Once the decision to build IE7 was in place, activity in both the security and standards sides began to focus on ways to fix bugs and prioritize implementation  The WaSP / Microsoft Task Force was created in late 2006 as a means to begin open dialog between the standards designers and developers and the IE7 team  Along with assistance from WaSP, the bug reports found at positioniseverything.net, and bug reports at quirksmode.org, a prioritization of bug fixes and implementations emerged

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12 Adoption Rates How IE Browser Adoption is Going

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17 Adoption Rate Review  IE6 took one year to become the leading browser  IE6 took one month to become important  IE7 will take about six months +/- to be the leading browser  IE& was never unimportant!

18 Yummy Support Good things in IE7

19 Child Selectors >  Child selectors select only the children of an element: #content > p  Selects only paragraphs that are children of #content #content > p > a  Selects only anchors that are children of paragraphs that are children of #content

21 Adjacent Sibling Selectors +  Adjacent sibling selectors select only the adjacent sibling of an element: th + td  Selects the td that immediately appears next to a th tr + tr + tr  Selects only the tr that is a sibling to a tr that is a sibling of another tr

23 Attribute Selectors [ ]  Attribute selectors select by attribute: a[title]  Selects any anchor with a title attribute a[id=“cart”]  Selects only the anchor with an id of “cart”

26 Attribute Selectors [ ] img[alt~=“offer”]  Selects any anchor with an alt attribute that contains multiple, space separated words and the word “offer” such as:

28 Attribute Selectors [ ] img[alt | =“offer”]  Selects any anchor with an alt attribute that contains hyphenated words, such as:

30 :hover Everywhere  In IE6, the :hover dynamic pseudo class was only available on anchor elements  In IE7, :hover is available for all elements: p {color: #999;} p:hover {color: #000;}

31 Alpha Transparency PNG  IE7 brings alpha transparency PNGs to designers  This is an extremely valuable leap forward in terms of offering sophisticated design options  We have some backward compatible options to offer the support to IE6 too, giving us real power with background and other graphics  You can use Dean Edwards’ IE7 Scripts or see for an.htc / JavaScript solution specific to IE6

33 Managing Backward Compatibility IE6 and IE7 Together

34 To Hack or Not to Hack?  Best strategy: Don’t hack!  If hack, then valid hacks  AVOID bug-related hacks: * html

35 If Hack then Surgical Correction

36 Dean Edwards’ IE7 Scripts .htc and JavaScript files  Reside on server  Free to use  Essentially makes IE6 run like IE7 

37 Conditional Comments  Use conditional comments to “hide” CSS rules from specific IE browsers:

38 Questions? Thank You!