Pete LePage Product Manager Internet Explorer Team Ottawa Dot Net Community January 3 rd, 2007

 Standards are a means to an end  Interoperability  Standards are sometimes ambiguous  Standards are evolutionary  CSS 2.0 became CSS 2.1  Internet Explorer 6 shipped in 2001  “Ship or wait for the committee”  Standards can be formalized after you’ve created your implementation

 Ship cycles and Standards don’t always mesh  Ship now, or ship when the standard is baked?  What to do when the standard changes?  Then why not ship more often?  Every standard change, and every bug fix?  Multiple standards to track  Increased website updates

 Implementing standards is complex  There are many ways to solve a problem  Differences in coding styles can lead to rendering difference  Different priorities often leads to rendering differences  First implementation often becomes the “standard”

 ACID2  An attempt to force similar priorities  All browsers try to differentiate themselves  Widgets in Opera  XUL in Mozilla  ActiveX in Internet Explorer

 Microsoft DOES care about standards  Active participant in several standards bodies  Cascading Style Sheets WG, Web API WG, Web Application Formats WG

 Every major change to IE run the risk of breaking existing sites  The Compatibility Conundrum  How do we move forward with standards while still pushing the envelope of web technologies?  Example: increasing the number of XMLHTTP connections allowed by the browser  Hard to change implementation after you’ve gone live

 “I’m really concerned that we’re breaking stuff in the name of goodness and that all users and developers will walk away with is ‘stuff broke’” Dean Hachamovitch General Manager, Internet Explorer Team

 Need to balance Standards Compliance with Site Compatibility  Doesn’t mean don’t improve  We need to be careful

What can you do to increase the power and visibility of your site…

 Operating System integration prevents true Side by Side operation  Frankenstein builds exist, but don’t guarantee the same behaviour as your users  Microsoft provides Virtual PC and a VPC image with Windows XP SP2 and IE6

Internet Explorer 7 IE6 in a Virtual PC

 Allows you to customize your browsing experience for your site, or experience  Lots of AddOns available at  FoxyTunes  StumbleUpon  Creating AddOn’s for IE requires C++  Win a trip to Mix 07 by writing an AddOn

Internet Explorer 7 AddOn’s in Internet Explorer

 Introduced in IE6 to improve compatibility  Compatibility is a critical adoption factor  IE7 “Quirks Mode” mostly didn’t change  Standards mode is increasingly popular  2006: 40% of top 200 sites use standards mode  2003: 0.5% of top 200 sites use standards mode  A dedicated compatibility team focused on working with external sites

Internet Explorer 7 Quirks vs. Standards Mode

 Include the DOCTYPE switch at the TOP of your page 

 Over 200 CSS Fixes  Enable :hover on all elements  Fixed positioning support  Min/Max-Width/Height support  Selectors: first-child, adjacent, attribute, child ▪ CSS 3 attribute selectors: prefix, suffix and substring  1 px dotted borders no longer render as dashed  Auto-sizing of absolute positioned element with right & left  Relative positioning issues  % calculations for height/width for abs positioned elements  Added support for Fixed positioning  Overflow behavior now fixed  All but 1 “Positioning Is Everything” bug fixed

 Alpha channel support in PNG images  Native XMLHTTPRequest  Better support for DHTML/Ajax applications  No longer subject to ActiveX being enabled  element now windowless  Improved JavaScript GC performance  Fixed some major memory leaks  Fixed Caching of gzipped files  Support for conditional style sheets

Internet Explorer 7 Layout Changes

 An easy way to share info with your users  Built in RSS platform on the system  Accessible from anywhere, for example Outlook  Anyone can write applications that take advantage of the RSS platform  Updates in the background  Data is available even offline  Can be extended with Simple List Extensions  Almost any data type can be “RSSified”

Internet Explorer 7 RSS and Simple List Extensions

 Add the following like to your   Extend RSS to get Simple List Extensions   More info on the RSS site on MSDN 

 An Open Standard created by A9 (Amazon)  Easy way to put your sites search on your users desktop/browser  Requires adding an XML file to your site that tells the browser how to use your engine

Internet Explorer 7 OpenSearch

 Add the following line to your   Create your own XML  de/en-en/default.mspx de/en-en/default.mspx  More about OpenSearch 

 Internet Explorer 7 has shipped  Easing the lives of Developers  Web Design Tool Bar  IE6 VPC – Highly requested!  Samples, Starter Kits, and Tutorials  IE Dev Center  IE Blog  Evangelizing IE7’s better standards support  Explaining the new security features of IE7

 Being delivered via AU and WU  15+ languages are available today  Many customized versions  Yahoo!  USA Today  Google

 US Browser Usage Share for 12/7/06-12/11/06 BrowserMarket Share (PC’s only) Internet Explorer87.12% Fire Fox11.80% BrowserMarket Share (PC’s only) Internet Explorer % Fire Fox 23.45%  Data from Web Side Story, an independent 3 rd party web analytics company

 Internet Explorer has a future  Improve the web application platform  Provide the best web user experience  We are committed to improving our standards support  We are committed to not breaking the web  Versioning and opting in will play a major role  IE.Next  It won’t be everything you want  It will be another big step in the right direction

 Give us your feedback, help us prioritize for IE.Next  Test your pages with IE7  Standards improvements may have changed how your site displays  Check your IE components  ActiveX, BHO’s and Toolbars need to be prepared for Opt-In and Protected Mode  Add RSS to your site  Create an OpenSearch provider  Create AddOns

Internet Explorer 7: A Hands On Look January 3 rd, 2007 – Ottawa Dot Net Community Pete LePage Product Manager Internet Explorer Team IE Team Blog: RSS Team Blog: © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.