Current Web Design - Oct 2006


Web design Sunshine Coast

Current web design is all about staying compliant with the latest web standards. When we started our web design business back in 1998 everyone designed using the equivalent of stone age technology in comparison to what is available today.

Web design was like the Wild West - no laws & plenty of cowboys. We now have web standards, compliency, design allowing people with disabilities access to the world wide web.

Over 90% of people view web pages in Internet Explorer and over 90% of those people are using the current Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is going to replace 6.

Our web server administrators are already testing Internet Explorer 7 in order to be ready. It is very likely that IE7 will be pushed out as a forced update to Windows XP users everywhere, as was done for Service Pack 2. The move to IE7 will not be a gradual migration, but a sudden and significant shift.

One night Windows XP users will go to bed using IE6 and the next morning they'll wake up, install a routine update, and just like that they'll be using IE7 to browse the web. That means, that as professional website designers, we have begun preparing immediately for IE7's impending release.

What's different about IE7?

From a user's perspective, improvements include tabbed browsing, better printing, RSS feed integration, more advanced searching, and better security features, as well as a plethora of add-ons to enhance the user experience (similar to Firefox extensions).

We have found that a lot of the older shopping carts are no longer functioning in the current Internet Explorer 6 and expect similar issues with IE7. Our business is professional web design Sunshine Coast and we have replaced / redesigned a number of web sites designed in the days of the "Wild West".

Simply put we design functional websites and we maintain those web sites as the web standards are continuously updated.

The detailed changes below are directed at our technical readers. For our non technical readers I suggest you view our Web Design Formula article.

The most important changes that will have a more direct impact on how your website is loaded and displayed in IE7 are listed below.

RSS integration – IE7 automatically detects RSS feeds and asks you to subscribe. It also gives you the option to have IE7 auto-check for feed updates (even when it's not running). Is your feed properly recognized by IE7?

Updated CSS behavior – the IE7 team worked very closely with the W3C workgroup to ensure standards compliance. They made over 200 changes from IE6 to become compliant with CSS2.1. Even if your site is standards compliant, it may not be rendered exactly the same as it is in IE6 or Firefox.

AJAX XMLHTTP Request changes – the IE blog states: “to have your cross-browser AJAX work better with IE7, you really should be invoking the native XMLHttpRequest (the cross-browser one) first to see if it’s available before instantiating the ActiveX control, instead of the other way around.”

Added security features – everything from more secure SSL defaults to disabling most Active X controls by default has been changed to help make the user's browsing experience more secure. These changes could drastically change your users browsing and purchasing experience.

Disclaimer

12website.com has prepared the supplied information as a voluntary service to the online community. The information is necessarily web design and small business in nature and is not intended to be relied upon other than as general background material. This should not be used as specific advice, recommendations or guidance, and specialist assistance should be sought by anyone in need of such help. 12website.com accepts no liability under any circumstances for any loss, expense, damages or costs whether direct or indirect (including loss of profits / damage to business) which may be incurred by any person as a result of relying on or using in whole or in part any of the supplied information.


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