So here I am a couple weeks after the IE team announced through a variety of different channels their proposal to help cushion the blow of their next browser release through the use of a META declaration and HTTP header, “X-UA-Compatible” describing what browser(s) the page and its associated styles and javascript files target.

I’ve got plenty of thoughts on why vendor extensions and related adjustments to behavior are bad. I also have some concerns over this one in particular. Extensions, and more general workarounds and hacks of all kinds [vendor driven or not] get buried into code, reused, copy and pasted, dropped in application templates, removed by accident, and generally used by people who don’t know why they’re doing it, but instead just because it works. As anything other then a very temporary, one time use solution this doesn’t seem to me to solve any problems that are inherent with either web standards or an ecosystem where content publishers are open to who they let see their content. But let me not get too far off onto that tangent and consider first that the proposed solution goes through.

For the moment I want to focus on the practical — what does the additional rendering mode and the ability to switch to it via META declaration mean to me as a working web developer?

There’s been lots and lots of discussion of the proposals via blogs, mailing lists and other forum, but they’ve focused on either how the proposal was raise and whether its appropriate direction for the technologies web developers work with to take. Through all those discussions however I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the long term impact of the proposals and how I need to manage my very non-theoretical code and projects. In a search for discussion of these practical examples on how one would start to tailor their code in this new model I’m turning to you all. Can the extensions, and the additional rendering mode they’re implying be worked around with no impact at all, or if it requires new planning on the part of developers, or is it just more of the same planning we’ve been doing for ages.

Right Now

In an XHTML1.0 IE6 & IE7 world my typical structuring of code to ease browser hacking and targeting has been as follows:

• use an XHTML1.0 [transitional or strict] doctype that triggers “not-quirks-mode”
• start code with no browser hacks
• For combined IE6&7 adjustments [hasLayout type stuff usually] use a separate style sheet linked inside conditional comments
• For IE6 but not IE7 use the * html hack when needing to hide stuff, or remember a few extra rules that anyone can get safely [display:inline; float:left;]
• Ignore IE5.x and less
• Keep more complex CSS and other hacks to a bare minimum [e.g. clearfixing, etc.] and instead design and code as ‘universally’ as possible

That has worked for the last 1-2 years in a world that knew nothing about IE8.

With IE8 in our sights

But now we’re in a world that knows IE8 exists which changes things just a little bit if I want to be a responsible web developer. Any document I publish or help a client publish from today on I have to consider [with limited knowledge of details] if and how I want to prepare them for the upcoming browser changes.

• Do I leave my above solution in place and do nothing? In doing so I have to hope that IE8 will be good enough to not get IE7 hacks but act like Gecko or WebKit — that or reside myself to expecting that some adjustments will have to be made once IE8 lands.
• Do I prematurely start to include the like-IE7 meta tag so that I don’t have to revisit the site later and just let the site live forever as IE7 compatible? Is it realistic to expect that this will still work, and there will not be any testing when IE8 hits required, and that things will work flawlessly without going through the same motions that should happen with any new browser release?
• Does it make a difference if I think the site will have regular staffing and updates or if its just a site build to get something published and nobody manages it again until the next redesign in a year or two?

Reasonable approaches all — I may flip flop some while I decide what I think works best and see what others are doing. However, they’re also solutions for the extreme near term. Looking further out the answers and options start getting fuzzier.

After IE8 hits

Shortly after IE8 hits web developers will have to switch from asking themselves how to code for the unknown, isntead having to code for the new known. It is easy to anticipate that a requirement for any new site in this time will be to cover exsiting compatibility [IE6 & IE7] and extend to the new kid on the block. So how might we do that with all these rendering modes floating around? At the pace standards move along, as well as the need to avoid total screwy quirks mode in the older browsers lets presume we’ll need to stick to the same languages that we’re using currently [for some time at least]. So to revisit my current model of structuring code for compatibility’s sake out 2 or 3 years what would that look like?

• Do we continue to play in IE7-standards-mode, coding down for IE6 and hope IE8 needs no adjustments and get nothing out of the IE8 progress?
• Do we use no compatibility flag and presume IE7 compatibility mode and then code up or down as needed and cross our fingers?
• Do we use the use the IE8 compatibility flag and code down to both IE6 and IE7?

What about JavaScript?

One thing we, as web developers, haven’t had to deal much with — ok, I lie, we’ve had to deal a lot with — but anyway, IE8 promises to have some large javascript feature changes and it has been cited [or presumed] that this as a big reason about why the separate “mode” is needed. Though I welcome the progress on the scripting front, the “rendering modes” is not an angle that has yet impacted JavaScript code. What real impact if any will the same browser and version changing javascript behavior based on mode have on our existing or future sites? Will it have any impact at all? Is the last option for browser version management feasible if the JS changes are indeed drastic?

We may not know how to answer this until some concrete information on JavaScript changes in IE8 is posted, or even still not until we see a public beta build released to the public. That said, I’m not sure the question, nor the answers are premature if we’re being asked now to evaluate and embrace the proposal.

Thoughts?

In a roundabout way I’m trying to both air, but also think through, my concern that the middle term outlook [2-3 years, or as long as XHTML 1.0, IE6 and IE7 all live] the additional rendering mode of IE8 and mode switching mechanics will keep developers in a “think like its IE7” mindset and not take real advantage of IE8 because of the difficulty of mixing the IE8 benefits with something that would work reasonably well in IE7.

I think its great to have a handle on the short term solutions, and its certainly enjoyable to envision a future with HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Canvas, DOM3, XML, XSL, and whatever other standards may be in the works. But should I be concerned that we’re setting ourselves up for a /worse/ middle term outlook then we would be if we kept on as we have been? Am I way off base with these concerns? Have I totally missed the point or the timeline?

Are there potential solutions or coding practices I haven’t thought of?

Through ALA and the IEBlog comes a proposal for a new mechanic of handling the backwards compatibility of web sites — pushing the familiar DOCTYPE Switch aside and going with a new mechanism of declaring target browser versions via meta tag.

• Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8 by Aaron Gustafson at A List Apart
• From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey by Eric Meyer at A List Apart
• Compatibility and IE8 by Chris Wilson at the IEBlog
• Opting-in to standards support and Microsoft’s Version Targeting Proposal at the WaSP

The perfect solution or the last sign of the web standards apocalypse? If you’ve got an opinion let it be heard.

A little thank you to Jeffrey and a promotion of Web Standards. More info here

I didn’t want to let today go by without a post acknowledging the 2nd birthday of Microformats.org and the related community.

Thought the first year was huge for microformats, the second one has seen additional growth in all areas from format maturity, to huge growth in the community and sites using various markup constructs, to greater support from application vendors.

Here’s a recap of a few recent news items or tidbits incase you missed them.

• John Allsopp’s book on Microformats was published
• NetNewsWire 3.0 is supporting microformats thus avoiding the need for one of my earlier hacks
• Other applications like Firefox are promising support in future releases
• Sites keep adopting various formats — from new sites like Twitter [hCard, XFN & hAtom] to older standbys like LinkedIn with 9million+ hResume based profiles!

So, Steve Jobs gives us web developers a double shot today with “One More Thing” of Safari on 3.0 on Windows and a “One Last Thing” of iPhone application development being ‘web standards’ based — just a another HTML, CSS & Ajax application.

While its absolutely great that Apple is embracing web standards in this way — great on many levels not the least of which is that it allows me as a web developer a few new avenues for work opportunities — I’m still left with a bit of a feeling of unease and anxiety.

Why? Though its great that so much can be done with these same technologies I also worry about deployment and having to target so many different specific platforms and manage different versions of the same site. Desktop browsers, WAP browsers, Ajax enhanced mobiles, Wii.. what’s next?

Now don’t jump all over me and tell me that no one is forcing me to create different targeted versions of a site or application or that the iPhone will read a standard web page just fine — I get that. Its just that in reality the need, requirements or desires to tailor user experiences to the given platform or form factor dictate that this can’t always be the case.

So while we’re deploying all the same technologies, we’re still designing, managing multiple interfaces to the applications we’re asked to build.

P.S. Is there a DOM events documentation floating around yet for the iPhone’s touchscreen gesture based interaction?

Bulletproof Ajax is a newly released book from New Riders and author [and fellow WaSP member] Jeremy Keith. Devoted to teaching the proper way to design for and use the technologies behind everyone’s current favorite buzzword. If you’re looking for a step by step guide on how to recreate your companies Flash application click for click this probably isn’t going to help too much (other then perhaps help push you into the direction of rethinking your approach, or just going back to your old friend), but instead it does a wonderful job of breaking down the systems that make Ajax work and putting them in context — that being a new dynamic way of enhancing, interacting with and manipulating web documents.

Tomorrow, April 5th, we will see the return of CSS Naked Day a novel idea where participating sites will remove all styling information in an effort to promote standards, get a little self promotion, and have a little fun. My take, reposted from the discussion at webstandards.org, is below. I said a bit more about it last year in I’m Not Naked, most of which still applies.

It’s meant to illustrate the importance of CSS and graceful degradation.

My interpretation on it is that it is meant to illustrate the importance of good HTML and markup practices as much as anything else — that CSS is great, but it should overshadow it all. Or maybe that’s just my own philosophy bleeding through. I surely would have called it “Naked HTML day” had I thought the idea up, and explicitly included scripting in the ’stripped’ category.

Let us also be clear, the group of participants in this event are self selecting, that is no one is forcing a site to remove their CSS [and perhaps other features such as JS that may manipulate style information]. Therefore I don’t see some of the objections to the promotion holding much water, or at least are made up of valid but misdirected concerns.

The maintainers and stakeholders of the sites participating shouldn’t do so lightly, but probably are not, and I would also suspect they aren’t doing so without considering all of the problems involved. And for the rare few that are participating for other motives [e.g. publicity alone] perhaps seeing their work in the unstyled state will lead to improvements.

And for the record, neither of my personal sites will be involved again this year. For most other sites I work on the group of stake holders is far too large to get a change like this through for what is primarily a social or quasi-political statement with little concrete benefits. But that’s the corporate world for you.

The Web Standards Project held our annual meeting at SXSW this evening. During the session Kimberly Blessing announced the the formation of our newest initiative, the WaSP Street Team. From the web site:

The WaSP Street Team is about you. No, not all the other YOUs reading this but YOU you, in your actual skin. The idea is that together we create a number of tasks – challenges if you will – to help the promotion of web standards in your local community. Things that will help get the word out to the businesses, educational institutions, web shops and individuals who live and operate directly near you. As a central group it’s hard for us to reach those people, but as a distributed team, it’s easy.

Get yourself on the announcement list and watch the blog for more information on how you can help contribute to the effort, and look for new tools and materials to help you get out and spread the word about Web Standards in your organizations and communities.