we are going to install IE8 in the company. We have many web based ASP.net applications.
I would like to evaluate the impact of installing IE8 on our asp.net applications. the applications are using .net 2.5 and 3.5. They use ajax in some cases.
I have never done such impact analysis so what is the best approach?
The approach is to run these applications in IE8 and see what happens.
After that you will write down what works and what breaks and attempt to estimate:
The time/work/money needed to fix what does not work
Costs and consequences of running for some time partially broken applications, until they get fixed
Advantages of running under IE8 (after everything will be fixed) vs. sitting with the good old IE7
That should give enough information to management to decide on how the migration will proceed.
I'd push out IE8 and change the IIS headers to force IE7 Compatibility mode by adding the following meta tag (the opening < and closing /> are removed so that the string could post):
meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7"
Make this change on all of of your ASP.NET sites. Then, as a site is updated to work in IE8, remove the header and IE8 will run in standards mode.
The first question I would ask is whether you have a compelling reason to move to IE8?
There are many websites that don't work (the whole reason that IE8 has a "compatibility mode"). The chances that you have done some of the same things these websites do to make them "incompatible" is fairly good.
There is no way around a need to thoroughly test your own applications before making the move.
We found that the move to IE8 actually broke some things in Visual Studio (seems it's a known issue) so didn't even get as far as starting to test the applications.
I am IE user and use Vista and develop in VS2008. IE7 became almost unusable and actually changed my default browser to Firefox. This caused more issues for me since I use msn hotmail and other things that seem to work together quite well (MS passport etc) I was also sceptical about upgrading to IE8, but did it. its better! I would suggest upgrading to IE8 and fixing what needs to be fixed anyway.
Related
We have over 200 web applications. They are used both internally and by our external employees. Our company's standard has been IE8. We are planning on changing that and adopting IE 10 or 11.
Also, our external employees may use the application in their preferred browser (FF, Opera, Safari, diff. versions, etc.).
I know of services such as browershots, but these are mostly to check if layout is consistent across browsers and tell you nothing if the functionality is still working or not. Is there any other way to do an efficient preliminary check for compatibility with newer browsers instead of having to do a full out regression test? If checks fail, the regression tests can follow and then refactoring what is necessary.
We can use tools like Citrix AppDNA or modern.ie and IECT tool as a combination to explore the strategy and update the applications
Today I have upgraded my browser to IE11.
The problem is that I have a ASP.NET site, that fails with dopostback not defined when clicking a linkbutton from the production site.
When debugging in VS2012 I get "this page can not be shown".
Do I really need to downgrade to ie10, to debug in ie again ?
I'm using Win7 on my local PC
See here for fixes:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IE10AndIE11AndWindows81AndDoPostBack.aspx
Basically this is fixed in ASP.NET 4.5 but there is also an older patch for all versions of the .NET framework.
Problem occurred cause of: There is a bug in the browser definition files that shipped with .NET 2.0 and .NET 4, namely that they contain definitions for a certain range of browser versions. But the versions for some browsers (like IE 10) aren't within those ranges any more. Therefore, ASP.NET sees them as unknown browsers and defaults to a down-level definition, which has certain inconveniences, like that it does not support features like JavaScript.
I also had same problem,I followed this article, and I'm sorted. Go through below link, It would help for sure.
fix
So recently Microsoft threw the joke that was IE6 into the recycling bin, and said that users should automatically be upgraded to the latest version of IE, if they hadn't already. Unfortunately for web designers, this means that some people (running XP) will be stuck with IE8.
I recently started redesigning a clients website to bring it up to date, and in order to make loading times quicker, save on disk usage, and on bandwidth, I have implemented the use of CSS3 code and then a big but... IE8 Doesn't support CSS3... :(
Is there a significant amount of users on XP / Vista / 7 who still use IE8, or have they moved to alternative, more up to date browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc?
Should I worry about trying to find a way to keep the website looking correct in all browsers? or is there a way for me to encourage visitors using IE8, to swap it for another browser?
I imagine this depends on how the website is used. Is it an intranet website, a public website, or an web application that the owner dictates the version. IMO the best way to figure this out is to have Google Analytics plugged into the web app.
I can tell you that the project I am currently on doesnt have the luxuary to rule out IE8. 70% of our users that use the web app I work on use IE8. It seems to still be the most used browser in the business world. (at least from my experience) Heck we still need to support IE7.
However if you can guarantee the web users are using an up to date browser, then thats a different story. Or of course you can say, this app doesnt support IE 8 or lower.
Thats my 2 cents.
IE8 is the default browser in Windows 7, so expect it to hang around forever, just as IE6 has because it was the default in Windows XP.
Use http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv/ or http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/ to ease the pain.
Yes, but according to WC3 the percentage of usage is now only ~8% for IE8.
Thats still a pretty big number to turn your back on however.
I'd be very interested to hear what professional developers think about this, particularly frontend developers.
How do you go about testing your designs in multiple browsers? Do you use virtual machines, each with a different version of Internet Explorer installed? What is your setup/workflow?
So, what's the most efficient and reliable way to test a design in several legacy web browsers?
Thank you.
I mostly use Spoon virtualization. They removed IE from the service aftyer Microsoft told them to however it's still a good service for testing other browsers/versions.
For IE I tend to use the Microsoft provided IE VMs.
If you need virtualization product then VirtualBox is pretty good and free.
I've also just discovered Browserling which does something similar to Spoon virtualization and has support for multiple IE versions.
Oracle's VirtualBox is free. I have the following VMs set-up:
Windows XP - IE6, Firefox 3
Windows XP - IE7, Firefox 4
Windows Vista - IE8
Really, I don't test older versions of Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. All three of those browsers are on quick update cycles now and the push their updates almost immediately. The chance that users are still using an older version of those is much less than those using Internet Explorer.
Even now, I don't really test in IE6 anymore (thank god), but I know this is different depending on the audience of your website.
Really, if you can get away with it, do your basic testing in IE 7, 8, 9 and the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Don't go completely out of your way to fix layout issues in older IEs; If you can get the information you want from the site, then the site is functioning. If someone complains about the site not looking exactly right, recommend they upgrade or switch browsers. "I can't upgrade from IE6 because my company uses it" is not really a valid excuse anymore with Chrome and Firefox being as light weight as they are, unless their computer admins have things completely locked down.
IE Tester allows to see web from ie5 till ie9.
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
It depends how legacy you wonna go but there is also Adobe browser lab.
I build a webpage and in IE8 + FF3 it goes well, but a friend opens it in ie7 and it's terrible.
How can I emulate IE7 / other things / FF2 in my Windows 7 envoirement?
You need to run in in a virtual machine as you can't have multiple versions of IE installed on the same machine the same time.
Downlaod Virtual PC 2007
Download the IE7 Virtual PC image from Microsoft. There's also an IE6 image there.
You can also install FF2 on the virtual machines safely.
IE8 has a Developer Tools utility under Toos->Developer Tools. You can change Compatibility Mode to view how the page would look in IE7. As for FF2, the only way I know of is to actually have FF2 installed. Maybe you can find an older download package?
Once the utility opens there is a Browser Mode: box on the top menu. Change that to IE7, and it will render the page as IE7 would.
I've used the 'Superpreview' feature that comes with Expression Web 3, it has help me to get a page working with IE8,7 and even 6, along with FireFox. You can get a free trail if you can't get the full version.
You can use IETester for IE 5.5 to 8 for emulation. You can add on DebugBar (by the same developer) into IETester for Firebug-like debugging.
However Firefox I'm not sure. The only thing I can think of is to download a clean FF 2 and install it on another computer.
As for Firefox, you can use a portable version.
Various options locally:
Run multiple virtual machines hosting different browsers (or combinations of browsers)
The latest version of expression has a fairly comprehensive browser comparison tool
There are some clever IE hacks out there too.
Also online
Browsercam (and similar sites)
Adobe Browserlab possibly - not sure how "live" it is yet.
There are a number of simulators, one at least from MS to let you view in different IE browser versions. However they are simulators so may not accurately reflect the actual browser. Another way, but it might be over the top for your purposes is to install VM's and put the real browser in each VM to do the testing.
I'm currently using Internet Explorer Collection which gives me over a dozen versions of IE, not that I test that many but it's interesting to look back at occasionally.