Posts Tagged ‘ie6’
Testing Your Websites in IE Just a Got a Little Simpler with SuperPreview
Posted in Web, on March 30th, 2010 by Carlos.
Testing your website layouts in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 have always been and continue to be the bane of any web designers existence, especially if you as a Mac user. I personally run Windows through Parallels so that I can test for Internet Explorer. I actually had 3 versions of Windows installed at one point – one for IE 6, one for IE 7 and another for IE 8 – I wanted to be sure that I was getting as accurate of a representation of my site in the various browsers as possible. That didn’t last long, and I sought out other solutions which did get me down to running one installation of Windows 7 with IE 8 installed, accompanied by IETester that let me test against legacy IE versions. But even that wasn’t all that great, and IETester seemed to be buggy.
Microsoft has come to the rescue (can you call it a true rescue if they’re the ones that created the mess in the first place?) with Expression Web’s SuperPreview, now downloadable as a free version. Yes, it is still a Windows app, but it gives you side by side views of your site in different versions of IE and even identifies the different tags and elements on your page so you can do some easier debugging. It looks like if you actually by Expression Web from Microsoft you can also have the ability to compare with FireFox. I hope this makes IE testing slightly less painful. [Microsoft via IT Shala via Make Design]
Google Apps to drop IE6 Support
Posted in Web, on February 2nd, 2010 by Carlos.
I received an email yesterday from Google Apps stating that as of March 1 2010, Google will begin to drop support for IE6 “as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers” starting with Google Docs suite and Google Sites editor. Later in 2010, Google Mail and Google Calendar will also drop support for the antiquated browsers. Google claims that it will be employing “faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5″ rendering older browsers useless.
I think it’s about time a major corporation such as Google is putting their foot down with support for browsers like IE6. Long known as the bane of every web designer and developer, IE6 still seems to have a chokehold on the Internet, even though its usage numbers are dwindling, As such, it is slowing down progress for the new technologies that make the Internet truly interactive, and perhaps more importantly, easier to develop for. Guiltily, I must admit that I even still insist that sites I design be IE6 friendly as you never know what browser a client or potential client is using. This announcement from Google, however, has me thinking that I will officially be dr0pping IE6 support as well. Given that it was released August 27, 2001 (according to Wikipedia), I think we are good to move on.
Do you still support IE6 for web projects, and if so why? Is it safer for interactive sites such as Google Apps to drop support for these browsers than perhaps a general information site?
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