HTML5, compatibility, and the future of IE9Internet Explorer 9 represents a nearly complete break with the past for Microsoft. It is the most standards-compliant browser Microsoft has ever created, with nearly complete support for the CSS3 and HTML5 standards. Smart, forward-thinking developers, Microsoft argues, will be able to write their markup for a web page once and be confident that it will work the same in IE9 as it does in any modern browser.
That’s the theory. The reality is a bit more complex. Despite Microsoft’s genuinely impressive efforts to build a standards-compliant browser, they’re saddled with the legacy of thousands and probably millions of web pages that will break (or display improperly) in IE9. I ran into these issues repeatedly during my testing with the IE9 beta. Here, for example, is a snippet of a page from Time.com:
Those Facebook and Twitter icons are supposed to be on the same row as the widgets above them, but whoever designed that page coded it using a handful of tiny tweaks designed to fix layout bugs in older IE versions, and they didn’t take into account the possibility that a future version of IE wouldn’t need those fixes.
At ZDNet.com, I found similar bugs, with buttons that didn’t work properly and a JavaScript-powered graphic that is supposed to rotate through multiple images but instead was stuck on a single image.
I even ran into multiple pages at Microsoft-managed sites that rendered incorrectly or complained that I needed to be using a supported version of Internet Explorer. Like this one:
Fortunately, IE9 has the same Compatibility View options as its predecessors, so it’s relatively easy to click the “broken page” icon in the address bar to fix problems like these. Designers can also code a page so that it always displays in IE7 compatibility mode, but that strategy cheats IE9 users, who should be able to see the page without those hacks.
Of course, there are still bugs in IE9—that’s why it’s a beta, after all. Some popular JavaScript libraries will need to be tweaked to work properly with the new browser. And there are different interpretations of the still-evolving CSS3 and HTML5 standards that will cause minor headaches for web developers until they’re sorted out. Check out these separate code blocks required to create rounded corners in IE9 versus Chrome.
Those changes will happen, over time. The wide availability of this beta represents a big push in the right direction; the final release of IE9 will mean an even bigger push. Microsoft will fix a lot of bugs between now and then, and some, but surely not all, web developers will update their code to accommodate IE9. The fixes, thankfully are minor—as simple as a line of code to tell the browser to render the page in standards mode. Thankfully, they don’t involve the sorts of godawful hacks that were necessary for IE6 and IE7. Those days are gone, although developers can be excused for thinking “Once burned, twice shy.”
So, should you install the IE9 beta? As with all beta software, I recommend caution. It’s an amazingly polished release, in my opinion, but it’s still a beta. I don’t recommend installing it unless you’re comfortable with beta software and understand the consequences.
And like all Internet Explorer updates, it’s a one-way street. If you install this beta on Windows 7, you can’t go back to your old version of Internet Explorer unless you restore a backup.
Update:
You can indeed uninstall IE9, which appears in the Installed Updates section of the Programs Control Panel. However, unlike the Platform Previews, you cannot install IE9 side by side with an existing IE version.Ironically, the very best candidates for this beta are those who use Windows 7 but gave up on Internet Explorer in favor of another browser. In that scenario, you can continue using Firefox or Chrome or Opera and use IE9 as a backup browser. You can even create pinned site shortcuts to run some sites in IE9 without affecting your default browser choice. It’s an ideal testing scenario.
Personally, I find the performance and usability improvements in IE9 nearly irresistible. They easily outweigh the minor rendering issues and incompatibilities with some sites. If you’re a happy IE8 user, I predict you’ll be just as impressed with IE9 as I am
source:zdnet end
