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MS Urging Developers To Prep For IE 7

Posted by Zonk on from the the-end-times-are-coming dept.

Mike Savior writes "Eweek has a story stating that Microsoft is telling web site developers to prepare their sites for IE 7. From the article: 'One area that Microsoft has clearly articulated as being one in which developers can start work now to prepare for IE 7 involves the UA (user agent) string. First discussed in the company's Weblog in April, the code change prompted a reminder on Wednesday to developers, telling them that Microsoft continues to run across Web sites that are not expecting Version 7 of the browser, and urging them to test their UA strings. '"

3 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. user agent by BoldAC · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you are depending on the user agent string, your web site design is flawed already.

    Sure IE is broken... but you just have to format to fit the lowest common denominator.

    Trying to detect the browser type for the majority of web designers is just silly.

  2. Let them release first, then we'll see by pe1chl · · Score: 5, Informative

    "I don't use IE at all, but I'll test on it because I have to," said Web designer Donna Donohue, owner of Norwich, Conn.-based development firm KidoImages. "We code to standards to be compliant with Firefox, and then hack for IE."

    Same for me. Our website uses standard CSS and it needs a hack (csshover.htc) to make it work on IE. Maybe IE7 no longer requires it, maybe it does. Who knows?
    Until then, the conditional stylesheet inclusion for IE has to remain there.

  3. Re:The difference in User Agents by DeadMeat+(TM) · · Score: 4, Informative
    I never really got it, why does the IE UA have Mozilla_4.0 in it?
    Long before Web developers started blocking browsers without the IE UA, they blocked browsers without the Netscape UA. (Mozilla was the code name for Netscape long before the open-source Mozilla project started, which is why "Mozilla" was in the Netscape UA.) Microsoft countered by using the Mozilla/x.x part of the Netscape UA, and then embedding the fact that it was really IE in the parentheses (which nobody really parsed at the time).