Internet Explorer 7 and web development

[moxie]

Hey guys,
So, I have a question for you guys who only run linux, and also use their linux box to do web development.

First, let me state, I don't have windows xp, and will not be purchasing windows vista, I only run fedora 5 and I use my machine to do web development. I use ies4linux to make sure what I do works properly in ie5 and ie6. But now that ie 7 is coming out, and as you know, with ie 7, it validates that you actually have a valid copy of windows, well, duh, I don't.

So, as more people move to ie 7 and as windows vista comes pre-installed with ie 7, what are the multitudes of linux only web developers to do? I am not going to run out and buy a copy of windows vista just to make sure that my web applications work on ie 7, but I am not sure what else to do? This isn't a problem yet because nobody is really using ie7, but give it a year...

Anybody thought about this, or talked about this yet? I hope microsoft eventually allows ie7 to be used without actually having to validate you have a proper license.

Hopefully somebody has some answers around here or am I just freaking out about nothing??

Thanks...

Jason

[Black_Templar]

Originally Posted by moxie

Hey guys,
So, as more people move to ie 7 and as windows vista comes pre-installed with ie 7, what are the multitudes of linux only web developers to do? I am not going to run out and buy a copy of windows vista just to make sure that my web applications work on ie 7, but I am not sure what else to do? This isn't a problem yet because nobody is really using ie7, but give it a year...

Anybody thought about this, or talked about this yet? I hope microsoft eventually allows ie7 to be used without actually having to validate you have a proper license.

I think the short of it is that you have to develop to the standard. However, any web developer will tell you that they need to write for their target audience. The majority of people I work with all use IE b/c it is the mandated standard for the company. Can folks use Firefox or Opera? Typically, no

If you are developing websites for your friends and family - look to what is easier for them. If you are doing commerical development - understand who you are trying to attract...The world we live in is monopolized by M$ and IE. Sometimes you have to code around their non-standard way of doing things...my suggestion is to use some of the open source validators on all the code you write.

Here is a link to the the w3c validators:
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/#validators

Good Luck
-Tony

[hiberphoptik]

i too must develop for IE even though we host/serve everything from IBM blades running RHEL, the rest of the company is using XP/IE on the desktops

you can install IE with cxoffice or wine and test things that way, or maybe even use vmware to install winduhs in a virtual machine

[pete_1967]

IE7 will be available as an update for XP (and possibly Win2K as well) so no need for Vista license (if maybe for XP license though).

From what I've heard of so far, they've been forced to follow W3C standards (one good thing coming out of Firefox), also for example in Europe, Firefox has approx 20% market share on home systems. My bet is that when Vista is finally released, IE's marketshare will drop further as instead of people buying new version of Windows, they'll (are forced to) only upgrade when they buy a new system with Vista pre-installed. I very much doubt that boxed copies will sell much.

[pparks1]

From what I have read, IE is only going to be distributed under the Windows Genuine Advantage program. Thus, it's not likely going to run over Wine or CrossOver office any longer because it won't validate that as a genuine copy of MS Windows. I think that is the rub, so to speak.

[hiberphoptik]

Originally Posted by pparks1

From what I have read, IE is only going to be distributed under the Windows Genuine Advantage program. Thus, it's not likely going to run over Wine or CrossOver office any longer because it won't validate that as a genuine copy of MS Windows. I think that is the rub, so to speak.

yeah.. because nobody has ever cirumvented any of Microsofts blocks before

[Dan]

I have the luxury of being a very small business. So I build for Firefox / w3c.

If it looks like a page is going to get badly borked in IE, (5-6) I Javascript redirect to a more suitable version of the page... And then I pop-up a JS window explaining why, with a link to examples of pages IE has trashed, and a link to www.us-cert.gov!

Perhaps it is dirty pool... but it's devastatingly effective!

Dan

EDIT: I give away a lot of Firefox / Thunderbird / pclinuxOS Live CDs that way!

[moxie]

Yes, exactly... that's what I am talking about. Just because ie 7 is *supposed* to now follow the wc3 standards... I am not going to hold my breath, or assume that it will look okay in ie 7 rather than firefox.

And while now I can check ie6 running under wine, it doens't sound like that will be possible with ie7. While the applications I develop are for the mass market (hence ie), I really love developing in linux, and don't want to have to purchase vista or xp just to get ie7...

[moxie]

Originally Posted by pparks1

From what I have read, IE is only going to be distributed under the Windows Genuine Advantage program. Thus, it's not likely going to run over Wine or CrossOver office any longer because it won't validate that as a genuine copy of MS Windows. I think that is the rub, so to speak.

Yes, exactly... that's what I am talking about. Just because ie 7 is *supposed* to now follow the wc3 standards... I am not going to hold my breath, or assume that it will look okay in ie 7 rather than firefox.

And while now I can check ie6 running under wine, it doens't sound like that will be possible with ie7. While the applications I develop are for the mass market (hence ie), I really love developing in linux, and don't want to have to purchase vista or xp just to get ie7...

[pete_1967]

Well, from my experience, there are very few and rare occasions (most well documented, e.g. IE's handling of cell spacing in tables, or nested lists in CSS) where standards compliant code breaks on IE (this is most common with tables and some CSS), then again, if you try something truly complicated in CSS, it's prone to break one way to another in each browser.

We've only ever had porblems with some CSS layers on IE to which we had very easy fix available.

The bigger problem will be JavaScript which is a pain to get to work on all browsers already, now with IE7, there'll be one more to worry about.

I check my code, when I need to do some HTML, or at the moment that I am converting our static pages to CSS (no need to tell; I got too much time on my hands and our local HTML team is not worth the ink their titles are printed on), I check maybe 1 of 100 fixes/ tweaks on IE and maybe 1 of 200 HTML/CSS changes actually breaks on IE (caught by our diligent QA team ).

And I got the luxury of working for a _very_ big company with traffic over 100 000 visitors a day (on 'slow' days) in the UK alone.

[mbokil]

I put IE 7 on my XP partition. I haven't had any problems browsing with it yet. It is pretty nice now. Most users will appreciate the updated GUI. I like the update to the user interface. It reminds me more of Firefox now with the tabs and customizeable toolbars. XP validates your copy of the OS before it allows you to download IE7.

[Finalzone]

Originally Posted by pete_1967

Well, from my experience, there are very few and rare occasions (most well documented, e.g. IE's handling of cell spacing in tables, or nested lists in CSS) where standards compliant code breaks on IE (this is most common with tables and some CSS), then again, if you try something truly complicated in CSS, it's prone to break one way to another in each browser.

Hence the aim for simplicity. As web developers, I keep learning about new trick,

We've only ever had porblems with some CSS layers on IE to which we had very easy fix available.

The bigger problem will be JavaScript which is a pain to get to work on all browsers already, now with IE7, there'll be one more to worry about.

Speaking about javascript, it appears Firefox is way ahead. I use less javascript on website because some users will disable it anyway.