Citrus Skies

Last minute IE7 testing

16 October 2006

Version 7 of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is rumoured to be released very soon, possibly even this week, now available to download and after a couple of weeks it’ll be ‘offered’ to all XP users as an automatic download.

IE7 fixes a lot, but not all, of the bugs and quirks present in IE6. Unfortunately, it also fixes a lot of the loopholes that allowed different style rules to be supplied to IE from within a single style sheet (i.e. CSS Hacks). Therefore, some CSS layouts which work in IE6 could be broken in IE7.

If you haven’t done so already, its really time to get moving on your IE7 testing, whilst at the same time ensuring you don’t break designs in IE6.

However, in its usual fashion, IE7 will completely overwrite any older version of IE on the user’s machine, thus killing any web developers’ hopes of being able to perform simple backwards compatibility testing.

So what’s a poor designer/developer to do? Well short of buying another computer just for IE6 testing, you do have a few options:

• Don’t install IE7, instead run it in ‘standalone’ mode, thus leaving your IE6 installation intact. There are several sites that will guide you through this process. (Examples: Test Internet Explorer 7 Without Installing It and Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 in standalone mode(IE7) )
• Install IE7 and run IE6 in standalone mode. You can find standalone versions of several IE releases here and PositionIsEverything.net have a guide to running IE Standalones
• Install a Virtual Server and run IE6 on it for backwards compatibility testing. For Windows, Microsoft provide a free virtual server whilst Mac users can make use of Bootcamp, Parallels (both for Intel-only macs) or Virtual PC

Update: Multiple “vintage” IE versions are now available in one convenient installer package here.

Once you’ve selected your testing method and start putting your sites through their paces, chances are that you might find some issues with your designs in IE7, so the next step is how to address them.

Microsoft’s own method of Conditional Comments is still available in IE7, allowing you to load different style sheets for different versions of IE by simply placing the <link ...> tag for the style sheet inside a versioned comment marker. Some folks don’t like this method because it reminds them of the “browser-sniffing” code of old (i.e. 2 years ago), but it is effective in allowing your to isolate your IE fixes to a separate file or files.

Alternatively, despite the demise of the faithful ’* html’ hack, which was used to great effect with IE6, there are still some CSS hacks that you can use. A detailed description of what’s available to play with for IE7 can be found in this Easy CSS Hacks guide. All of these hacks rely on bugs within IE’s CSS parsing system and so, as time goes by, they may be fixed and your hacks will stop working. However, for the short-term they may be the quickest way to make your site designs IE7-proof, whilst you plan your long-term strategy.

Whichever methods you choose to test and fix IE7 issues, its important to remember that you’re not alone – Every web designer and developer will be affected by the same issues. So, if you hit a problem that you can’t get round, pop over to your favourite web design forum or blog and you’ll probably find someone else with the same problem and quite possibly the solution.

Good Luck!

Article Tags: browsers, microsoft, standards, ie7