Is your site/store ready for IE7?

[Pete McNamara]

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record on this, but is your site/store ready for IE7?

Certain coding which did not conform to W3 guidelines was treated by IE6 and previous versions in a particular way. IE7 treats such code in accordance with the W3 guidelines and so pages that contain such code may not display the way the site/store owners intended.

The reason why I am harping on this is that unlike all previous upgrades of Internet Explorer, the entire world user base will be upgraded to IE7 over a period of a couple of months, instead of a couple of years.

See this October 19 (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/93945/93945.html) article and the comment below:

"Schare reiterated Microsoft's plans for distributing IE 7.0. Microsoft will release the new browser as a high-priority update through Automatic Updates in about three weeks. However, IE 7.0 will be distributed over time, so it could take two or three months for IE 7.0 to be distributed to all Automatic Update users"

Check your site/store thoroughly in IE7 to ensure your pages continue to display the way you intended.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

And this is another reason why you shouldn't use IE as your sole testing browser.

[julie_thompson]

If one's site displays correctly in Firefox would it display correctly in IE7?

[Pete McNamara]

It should - Microsoft is following almost all the W3 guidelines with IE7.

[chucklasker]

I installed IE7 a few weeks ago and tested every site I've worked on. They all looked exactly the same. However, there's still differences between IE7 and FireFox, I noticed, mostly in minor things like spacing and CSS font control.

The big thing to me is the prominence they've placed on the SSL lock. It's now up next to the address bar, and, along with a popup warning, it changes color dramatically if there's an SSL error, like mixed content or the SSL certificate not being accurate. If the SSL is registered to a different domain, it doesn't even pull up the page - you have to click a link telling it to go ahead and pull up the page. If you'd been depending on people not really noticing that your site is not secure in checkout or ignoring SSL warnings, now's the time to buy an SSL certificate for a hundred bucks or so and have it installed.

[julie_thompson]

Whew!

Thanks Pete and Chuck!

[dotCOM_host]

There are quite a few web based apps that don't work well in IE7 (yet) and require updates. Even something as common as Plesk web control panel has serious display issues in IE7, as does its Horde webmail system. SWsoft promises to have updates available early next week.

Definitely test your sites in IE7 and Firefox - just because your site 'works' in Firefox is NO guarantee it will work properly in IE7. By default installing IE7 will remove IE6 from your system, but there are ways to install it side by side so you can use both IE6 and 7 on the same PC. I prefer to run it this way so that you can test sites in both browsers quickly without having to resort to keeping an old PC around with IE6 for the forseable future.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

We just worked on a store yesterday which required many updates of modules due to IE7 puking on some extraneous code input. Everyone should be testing their sites.

[Red Flare]

I just tested my site with IE7 and it worked perfectly.

One thing I really like about IE7, is that if your customer is logged in and goes to add an item to the shopping cart IE7 does not give the "Although this page is encrypted..." error. Firefox does. See the screen shot for the error below. This will most likely improve the shopping experience for particularly paranoid customers.



Firefox error
http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n311/tabletkin/SP32-20061022-214838.gif

[dotCOM_host]

Red Flare,

I'm afraid you only get that warning message when you either have misconfigured settings in your store, or mismatched http/https references in the URL vs what's in the actual HTML code. No browser will display this type of message in any properly configured and coded MIVA Merchant store, so tripple-check your settings and code as what you describe is not exactly what everyone else experiences on other web sites. This is definitely not the norm, and it's a helpful indication that you have something not set up quite right in your store. It's not Firefox's fault. They are just trying to point out the problem to you.

[Red Flare]

Thanks Remic.
Not exactly sure what to look for. I'l need to talk to my host.

[julie_thompson]

Does anyone know how one can get a copy of IE7? I thought it wasn't available for public download until Wednesday?

And for those who have installed IE7, is there any steps one should take to avoid any install conflicts? How do you upgrade IE6 to IE7? Does the install just know to overwrite certain files?

(I am always sooooo leary of installing new Microsoft software...)

[dotCOM_host]

Just go to http://www.microsoft.com - 60% of their home page is one big link to download it. :-)

[dotCOM_host]

I take it back... they must have changed it this morning (it was there for the past few days). Simply use the Windows Update to download it. It's coming up now as a 'required' update. And yes, installing IE7 will automatically replace IE6 for you.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

Red Flare,

I'm afraid you only get that warning message when you either have misconfigured settings in your store, or mismatched http/https references in the URL vs what's in the actual HTML code. No browser will display this type of message in any properly configured and coded MIVA Merchant store, so tripple-check your settings and code as what you describe is not exactly what everyone else experiences on other web sites. This is definitely not the norm, and it's a helpful indication that you have something not set up quite right in your store. It's not Firefox's fault. They are just trying to point out the problem to you.

Exactly, and when you see that, stop what you're doing and fix it. Nothing like a discrepancy ignored then later find out someone gained access to customer data.

[Dan - Kemper Strategic]

I have found a lot of issues with IE7 not displaying simple CSS properly.

[dotCOM_host]

I have found a lot of issues with IE7 not displaying simple CSS properly.
That's because IE7 is now 'standards compliant.'

:-)

Sorry, couldn't resist! MS has been claiming that IE7 was going to be following all common standards a lot more than any other browser, but everyone who's ever used it from the early beta days to the final release can tell you that Microsoft, once again, has invented "their own standards" with complete disregard for the rest of the world. Their own MSN site already complains in a few places when you try to access it with Firefox, and on some systems it tells you you are running bootleg copy of Windows and asks you to install a new, legitimate copy, before allowing you access to portions of Windows Update system.

[Dan - Kemper Strategic]

That's because IE7 is now 'standards compliant.'

Almost blew Mt. Dew all over my keyboard... :eek:

You know the end of the world is coming the day Internet Explorer is truely standards compliant or if Vista/Longhorn is sitting on the store shelf. ;)

[dotCOM_host]

BTW, Firefox 2.0 is going to be released tomorrow, officially, but it looks like they already posted the files on their FTP server today. If you want to start testing everything with both IE7 and Firefox 2.0, you can do so already. I got Firefox 2 downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux - will start testing it today.

[Dan - Kemper Strategic]

Wow, so far I am very disappointed... Firefox 2.0 is extremely slow and clunky on both Mac OS X and Windows.

BTW, Firefox 2.0 is going to be released tomorrow, officially, but it looks like they already posted the files on their FTP server today. If you want to start testing everything with both IE7 and Firefox 2.0, you can do so already. I got Firefox 2 downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux - will start testing it today

[dotCOM_host]

Hmmm, interesting... what sort of machines do you have (CPU speed, RAM, etc)? I've installed it so far on two of my test systems: a G4 Mac mini with 512MB RAM and it rocks, and on Windows end, on a P4 Dual Core 3.2GHz 2GB RAM - also runs plenty fast. These systems are both over a year old so we are not talking about anything extravagant here.

[Dan - Kemper Strategic]

iMac G5 and DELL (Core 2 Duo) both with 2GB of RAM running on DSL. I will be curious to see if what I am seeing disappears over the next couple of weeks, usually does with most new releases. Page load times are extremely slow though on all machines.

Hmmm, interesting... what sort of machines do you have (CPU speed, RAM, etc)? I've installed it so far on two of my test systems: a G4 Mac mini with 512MB RAM and it rocks, and on Windows end, on a P4 Dual Core 3.2GHz 2GB RAM - also runs plenty fast. These systems are both over a year old so we are not talking about anything extravagant here.

[immy79]

Just FYI...

Here's a post in the IE Blog that links to some useful tools/resources to help test compatibiltiy with IE7.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/10/06/IE7-Is-Coming-This-Month_2E002E002E00_Are-you-Ready_3F00_.aspx

[bill_1983]

if you have a good and clean code, the function is ie7 is fine.

Bill

[Biffy]

A Simple Solution

Use this stylesheet header:

<link href="http://website.com/mm5/css/compliantStylesheet.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<!--[if IE 6]><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://website.com/mm5/css/ie6stylesheet.css"><![endif]-->

This causes IE6 to use it's own stylesheet and compliant browsers to use their own stylesheet. Write the HTML/CSS code for compliant browsers such as Firefox, get it to validate, then copy the stylesheet and revise it for IE 6.

Problem solved permanently.