Response to Browser Updates
September 2009
The Problem:
If you’ve updated your browser lately, you may have noticed that your website is no longer displaying properly. You are not alone—web giants such as YouTube.com, Wikipedia.org, Facebook.com, Flickr.com, Amazon.com and AOL.com are struggling right along with you due to the changes being made during browser updates. In fact, there are some 2,400 sites that Microsoft has discovered do not render properly in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).
Why?:
The problem boils down to newly accepted “web standards”. Have you ever looked at your site in IE and then later in FireFox? Did you notice any differences? How about when your site renders on a BlackBerry or other PDA? Web standards are in response to these differences—they are the rules developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that make it possible to design for all browsers and devices as easily and quickly as designing for just one.
Think of your browser like a translator—it takes the code that web designers write and translates it into something you can understand—your website. IE8 was designed to demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to compliance with web standards, so the default settings on this browser interpret web content in its most standards compliant way. IE8 is like a translator that isn’t taking into account any mispronunciations or slang, so your message gets jumbled—your site no longer renders properly.
Prior to IE8, browsers were much more lax in their interpretation of code. Browser adherence to the newly accepted web standards means that now, common practices of web designers every where (including those for Facebook.com and Amazon.com) must be reworked as technologies continue to grow and develop.
It would seem that there’s an easy answer to this problem—don’t use IE. Unfortunately, the majority of the web surfing world will still be using it, and they won’t be able to view your site the way you want.
The solution:
It’s time to update you website. It may seem like a pain, but these updates are necessary today and are going to make a big difference tomorrow. Think of your website like a car—your old high school clunker may get you around the block, but if you’re looking to drive across country you’ll want to invest in a hybrid! Your old site may work just fine with the lax standards of old browsers, but stricter adherence to web standards is the future and without the necessary updates your site could become obsolete.
The bonus:
Why do people have websites? So that other people can see them! This necessary update to your site will make sure that your website is seen correctly and more frequently. The adherence to web standards means the use of style sheets (CSS) when designing a website. In a nut shell, this means that the style of your site is held in a separate file than the content of your site. This allows for search engine spiders to crawl through the your site’s content without getting caught up on all the code.
THIS: < td width="100%" > < font face="verdana,helvetica,arial"
size="+1" color="#CCCC66" > < span class="header" > < b >Join now!
< /b > < /span > < /font > < /td >
Becomes THIS: < h2 >Join now!< /h2 >
Even if you don’t understand what that all means, it’s easy to see that the second option is easier to understand. If a search engine spider can quickly and easily understand the contents of your site you will start appearing higher in search engine results.
It’s time for an upgrade.