Burying Windows XP with IE11 Enterprise Mode

Screen shot from Microsoft's presentation on IE11 Enterprise Mode, showing what browsers are available on what versions of Windows. Note that the Venn-ish diagram has no IE11 intersection for Windows 8.

As of today, Windows XP has effectively reached its end of life. What I mean by that is that Microsoft will no longer be releasing security patches for Windows XP. Those of you waiting to deploy those XP exploits can run at the platform unopposed.

While this may be a nuisance for the home user (and the family who acts as his/her tech support), this has larger implications in the business world. For example, if you work in the healthcare world you may very well be in violation of HIPAA / HITECH laws if you're still running Windows XP tomorrow.

What's really annoying about this is that so many web-based applications were built to support the dominant browser(s) at the time — Internet Explorer 6 through 8. What that means is users on Internet Explorer 11 are being locked out of these online tools, making the transition away from Windows XP (which cannot have a version of IE greater than 8) a tough proposition for organizations.

Simply put, poor web development practices have created an environment where upgrading to the latest version of IE is directly at odds with keeping your productivity up (if it requires you to stay on an old version of IE). Complicate that by now making that old version of IE a vector for security breaches and compliance penalties/lawsuits.

But fear not! As long you have the hardware and licenses to run Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 (notice, not Windows 8), you can still use those Internet Explorer 8 web sites without being locked out (you're SOL if you need IE6).

With a week before Windows XP turns into a zombie, Microsoft released Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer 11. After all, you only needed a week to get all that hardware in place and configured, right?

Enterprise Mode doesn't just emulate IE8, it masquerades as it. Some of the benefits of Enterprise Mode:

• Enterprise Mode sends the IE8 user agent string to defeat misguided browser sniffers;
• it mimics the responses IE8 sends to ActiveX controls, ideally allowing them to keep working;
• it supports features removed from later versions of IE (CSS Expressions, woo hoo!);
• pre-caching and pre-rendering are disabled to keep from confusing older applications;
• IE8's Compatibility View is supported, so odds are many applications designed for IE7 will work.

Some web developers have panicked that now they'll have to support another browser or browser mode, but so far the evidence doesn't bear that out.

Enterprise Mode will be controlled by a central source, most likely corporate IT departments, and will only be enabled for sites that have been manually identified. Intranets and custom-built un-maintained web-based applications are an easy fit here. If an IT department deems it appropriate, it can also allows end users to decide to enable Enterprise Mode on a site-by-site basis.

Microsoft has been testing this in many industries and countries (though not China, the biggest culprit for old, and illegal, versions of Windows). Hopefully this will help speed users to upgrade to IE11, even if it doesn't provide motivation for organizations to upgrade their legacy IE8 applications.

In addition to the links above, you can get more information from the video of Microsoft's Enterprise Mode presentation, or you can just view the presentation slides alone.

In short, this is a great band-aid for organizations that already have Windows 7 or 8.1, but won't be helping to push IE8 out of the way (despite the best efforts of some). In short, as web developers, we can expect to support IE8 for a while still.

Related

With the demise of Windows XP (even though we know it's not suddenly gone today), Internet Explorer 6 is also at its end of life (because no supported platform can run it). We know that it won't go away completely, but it's still being celebrated at sites like IE6death.com.

Update: April 11, 2014

I mentioned HIPAA above and linked to a post that argues for the presence of Windows XP as an automatic HIPAA violation. A more balanced and, and well-cited, post is over at the Algonquin Studios blog: So You’re Stuck with Windows XP but Still Need to be HIPAA Compliant

“Tracking Printed Pages (or How to Validate Assumptions)” at Web Standards Sherpa

Today my second article at Web Standards Sherpa has been posted, Tracking Printed Pages (or How to Validate Assumptions). I fit a lot in there, but the gist is that I show you how to track when and what pages from a site are printed so you can make a better decision about where to invest your effort.

I also draw a comparison to the time we all spend on building carousels for sites, but may not be tracking. After all, if no one uses the carousel and people do print pages from your site, you might just want to change where you are spending your development time.

The article also has the nifty ReadSpeaker feature which means that the page can read the article aloud to you in a voice that is entirely unlike mine (at least it's a male voice by default).

What guides your project decisions? Data or assumptions? Adrian discusses the importance of tracking site features, like print styles, to inform how and where you invest effort. Read it…

Balancing Act: Features, Budgets & Timelines at Web Standards Sherpa

As of today I am an author over at Web Standards Sherpa. I wrote an article discussing the process of juggling a no-budget, tight-timeframe web site for Buffalo Soccer Club while still trying to adhere to best practices. The article is titled "Balancing Act: Features, Budgets & Timelines."

I get a chance to talk about responsive design and even rant just a little bit about print styles (the article itself prints well, too). The article also has the nifty ReadSpeaker feature which means that the page can read the article aloud to you in a voice that is entirely unlike mine (at least it's a male voice by default).

Adrian offers insight into the decision process of building a new site for the Buffalo Soccer Club, a not-for-profit with little to no budget and a looming deadline. Read it…

Don't Use Global Browser Stats

When I say "global," I don't necessarily mean the whole world, but really any aggregate pile of numbers for browsers that aren't culled from your own site or project.

With IE6 finally fading (which many developers will claim is a result of their IE6-blocking sites), the ire of developers has turned to Internet Explorer 7. Given that many web developers want to play with the new shiny (and not worry about supporting older browsers) or hate the extra work that sometimes comes with supporting older browsers, it's no surprise that disdain for IE7 is high.

It is with that experience that I think casually tweeting global stats and calls-to-action can be irresponsible without context, as this one on Friday:

Very surprised how many developers actively support IE7 despite it's miniscule usage now. Let's move on! twitter.com/paul_irish/sta…

— Paul Irish (@paul_irish) April 26, 2013

This tweet lead to the usual self-congratulatory responses of how it's a web developer's responsibility to force users to upgrade, old browser support is just a false assumption from the client (and maybe that client should be fired), money is being thrown at the wrong problem, IT departments are just jerks, and so on. While Paul clarifies in a follow-up tweet that he still thinks the content should be accessible, that point is lost as a tweet response instead of a tweet all his followers will see.

Competing Stats

Some responses were more thoughtful and based on a different source of global stats:

@paul_irish on the other hand, IE7 still has significant marketshare according to Akamai akamai.com/html/io/io_dat…

— David Storey (@dstorey) April 26, 2013

Screen capture of Akamai chart with Safari, IE7 and IE10 highlighted.

The Akamai chart shows that IE7 is about on par with IE10 and even fares slightly better than Safari 6. The more discerning viewer might notice that Safari use goes up on weekends just a bit while IE7 use drops off for the same period, suggesting IE7 traffic might be coming from office workers.

Ignore Stats That Aren't Yours

A few people try to make the point that those numbers don't apply to their sites, some even try to make the point that this isn't about browser support at all:

@js_dev @paul_irish you're not supporting browsers, you're supporting customers. Job #1 is serving your customers.

— Nicholas C. Zakas (@slicknet) April 26, 2013

As an example, I have a site I was working on last night that gets 7.3% of its traffic (over the last month) from IE7. That's about one in 14 users. I know I have to support users on IE7 because I look at the stats for the site, not because I look to Akamai, StatCounter, or anywhere else.

Here's the takeaway I want everyone to recognize: The only browser statistics that matter are those for the site you're supporting.

I feel so strongly about that point that I am going to quote myself just one sentence later:

The only browser statistics that matter are those for the site you're supporting.

This Applies to Other Stats

I've seen plenty of people discuss window sizes over the years and make generalizations about what sizes to support — even more common in the era of responsive web design. But global screen sizes are irrelevant. Instead, look at the numbers for the site you're supporting. Even better, look at the viewport size:

• My Viewport Sizes

There has been a resurgence in discussion of late on print styles, but nobody seems to have any stats for how often users print pages. In the absence of raw data, developers talk about how they use sites and how their circle of contacts use sites. Instead, track it for your own sites and know when pages are being printed:

• Tracking When Users Print Pages

There are many other cases where developers look to global stats in lieu of tracking their own, but I haven't written tutorials for them. Now might be a great time to consider writing some of your own for the data points you want to capture.

Related

• On Browser Support, by David Bushell, April 26, 2013.

My Previous Rants

• Let's Treat Old Browser Users Better, July 5, 2012
• Another Anti-IE Gimmick, June 14, 2012
• Exclusion Is a Feature Now, May 10, 2012
• Don't Blame Opera, Blame Devs, April 27, 2012
• The Return of “Best Viewed in…” March 4, 2012
• Don't Expect Microsoft's Auto-Update to Kill IE6, December 23, 2011
• Test in Lynx and Print, It's Your Job, December 12, 2011
• Everything Will Be the New IE6, December 8, 2011
• Selection Bias When Reviewing Browser Stats, March 13, 2011
• RIP IE6 (Not Really, But Here's to Hoping), March 4, 2010

Going the Wrong Way

While supporting your users, and by extension their browsers, is the best approach, it is possible to get so focused on browsers themselves that instead of cutting edge you end up doing the opposite (even if it takes time to become apparent). Take this example from the UK Department for Work & Pensions:

The service does not work properly with Macs or other Unix-based systems even though you may be able to input information.

You are likely to have problems if you use Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Windows Vista or a smartphone. […]

There is also a high risk that if you use browsers not listed below, including Chrome, Safari or Firefox, the service will not display all the questions you need to answer.

The supported list of browsers and operating systems are combinations of Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP with the browsers Internet Explorer versions 5.0.1, 5.5 and 6.0, Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7.

Age, Treachery Bests Youth, Skill

Social Media seems to be wildly misunderstood by some folks, including those within the social media profession who have the ability to use its own tools to spread that misunderstanding like a telephone game.

Though my example is old news (by SM standards), I have seen it popping up for the past couple weeks pretty regularly. On July 20, Nextgen Journal published a piece called Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25.

I should qualify that when I heard the title I laughed and assumed it was parody. It wasn't. By the time I read her piece (two days after it was posted) a series of blog responses had popped up. I tweeted the absurdity from a conference (I was studying web intents, really):

Hah! "Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25" nextgenjournal.com/2012/07/why-ev… Response: experiencetheblog.com/2012/07/a-resp… via @blairboone cc @smcbuffalo

— Adrian Roselli (@aardrian) July 23, 2012

I could easily pull the article apart, but it's been done. The link in my tweet does a good job already. To the young author's credit (which may demonstrate that she does understand social media), she has avoided the Streisand effect by allowing the article to stand and the comments to roll in.

Instead of reading all the rebuttals, I like the meta conversations that have popped up about the concerns over ageism in the industry (which appear to be so far unfounded by the successful brands), or how we should all remember that once it's on the internet, it tends to stay (something older users may have been protected from in college, though I wasn't one of them). Some have even suggested the responses from the elder generation could have been more helpful and less brutal (even if I think some of the brutality was helpful).

Some folks saw an opportunity and just ran with it, like the guy who registered CathrynSloane.com, the name of the author of the original article:

I discovered Cathryn had decided not to secure her personal domain name for the past 10 years […] I spent a total of $11.00 USD and about an hour setting up free email & web hosting for this domain. Now all 2,267,233,742 (as of 12/31/11) Internet users can find and read the information presented here. No need to mess with Facebook, Twitter, etc., and I have full informational control over content/context and privacy.

I am over 25. Not by a little. I am also a member of the local chapter of Social Media Club, whose local membership spans a range of ages but does tend toward the younger (than me) side.

I have clients who have asked about finding someone to help them act as their face on assorted social media platforms. I tell them that factors to consider when evaluating a social media manager include experience, skill, understanding the brand message, and just having the emotional intelligence and savvy to present a brand on any social media outlet.

An intern at the copier may be a great use of an inexpensive resource, but an intern who acts as the voice of your organization in a particular form of media probably isn't. Knowing how to use a copier is a rote skill which does not make an intern qualified to produce the annual report or press releases. I feel you can swap Facebook, Twitter, etc. in place of the copier and the analogy stands.

I'd also like to point out that much of this is a rehash of conversations back at the dawn of the web, when the job title "webmaster" was coined and the younger someone was the more qualified he/she was. That also didn't pan out as true.

No matter how old you are, there is something to be learned from this entire story. Probably many somethings, but one that stuck out during a conversation today (which led to this post) was that knowing how to use a tool doesn't mean you won't cut yourself with it. I suspect Ms. Sloane has learned that now.

Related (Because I Said So)

1. Another Piece Claiming Social Media Makes You Dumber, August 9, 2011.
2. Twitter As Passive-Aggressive Enabler, January 4, 2011.
3. Humorous Social Media Infographics, October 6, 2010.
4. Don't Let Social Media Get You Robbed (or Stalked), March 2, 2010.
5. Lots of Twitter Followers Guarantees... Nothing, January 6, 2010.
6. Facebook Doesn't Make You Smarter, Rigorous Research Does, September 8, 2009.

New Crowdsourced Translation Option

Many organizations don't have the budget to guide them through a full translation / localization project, and some don't even know where to start. In late 2009 I wrote about low/no-cost options from Google (machine translation) and Facebook (human-powered): Facebook and Google Want to Translate Your Site

A new option has emerged recently, covered in the Mashable piece Free Online Human Translation Service Takes On Babelfish, Google Translate. Unfortunately the writer of that piece doesn't seem to understand the rigor that has to go into the translation process, so opportunities to provide a deeper analysis are missed in the article.

The service is called Ackuna, a free offering from a translation agency. Mashable's suggestion that this service takes on the two translation giants on which most web users rely is silly — Google and Babelfish provide real-time machine translation. Ackuna does neither. Ackuna uses people to provide translation and does so at the pace of the volunteer translators.

I have already made a case against machine translation for anything other than casual or immediate needs. I almost always counsel my clients against its use, including the free Google translate widget you can drop into a web site. There are exceptions, of course, but that's out of the scope of what I am addressing here.

Because Ackuna uses humans for translation, there are a number of questions that anyone looking to use Ackuna should ask. I detailed a set of questions in my 2009 post, but I'll recap here (excluding the questions regarding Facebook Connect):

1. Does Ackuna attract users who are fluent in the desired target language?
2. Are these users willing to help translate your content for free?
3. Is the translator a subject matter expert?
4. Is the translator part of your target audience (including geographic and demographic breakdown)?
5. Are you (or your client) comfortable letting unknown third parties translate your message?
6. Is time budgeted to identify content for translation?
7. Is time budgeted to have someone review the translation?

Ackuna's FAQ page answers some of these questions, but doesn't really explain how you qualify a translator. Ackuna's translators are ranked in the site by a combination of user feedback and badges. Think upvotes and downvotes, with points determined by whether or not a translation (or a step) was accepted or not. Badges are awarded based on other translators marking submitted translations as accurate.

When it comes to deciding whether a translation is correct, assuming you don't speak the target language, Ackuna doesn't make any guarantees:

Use a translator's reputation and badges as an indicator of their credibility, and take into account the comments and feedback left on each translation by other users. Use these factors and your best judgment before accepting the translation of your text.

If timing is a concern, remember that translators are providing translations because they want to. The only pay-off for these translators are badges and points. When you have no contract and no way to pressure someone for work, there is no guarantee it will ever be completed. In case you can't wait and decide to walk away with what's been translated so far, from the FAQ:

How do I download my completed translation?

[…] You will not be able to view a completed translation until every segment in your project has at least one translation submitted.

Not being able to secure translations can be a bit tricky, too, especially if some of your content is sensitive or personal. Given this clause in the terms & conditions, you may want to think hard about what you post for translation:

[Y]ou give the right to Ackuna and its affiliates to store your input indefinitely and reuse it at any time and for any purpose at our discretion.

Ackuna needs critical mass to produce good translations (or translators whose profiles don't read like Hipster spam-bots). It needs many translators reviewing each others' work to produce robust translations in timeframes that matter for businesses. Ackuna needs more users ranking one another's work, otherwise it may be too hard to know if that Simplified Chinese translation really conveys your message properly — especially when the translators all have a similar rating. Ackuna's bare-bones interface may not help it attract good Samaritans who just want to translate, since it's not too easy to see all the projects in one pass (you have to page through them) and the search feature doesn't work (yet, it claims).

Ackuna itself is not a bad idea. A translation workflow and process is a necessity in any translation project and Ackuna provides some of that. If you already have translators available to you, it might even make an effective no-cost solution to manage the workflow and get others to weigh in on the work.

What Ackuna could do is counsel its users on what makes good translation, maybe even cross-selling its parent company's services. From there it should group translations into industries or subject matter so that those with experience in them can find content more relevant to their skills. In addition, finding a method to indicate a translator has a specific industry or region expertise and provide a ranking system for same can go a long way to helping a user understand if his or her translation is as good as it could be.

I want to be clear that I am not criticizing Ackuna (though I could be criticizing Mashable's presentation of Ackuna). Providing a free service for something so rooted in the complexities of human language goes beyond what its technology can do. As I have commented before about free services, you get what you pay for.

We Really Still Have to Debunk Bad SEO?

I've been doing this web thing from the start (sort of — I did not have a NeXT machine and a guy named Tim in my living room) and I've watched how people have clamored to have their web sites discovered on the web. As the web grew and search engines emerged, people started trying new ways to get listed in these new automated directories, and so began the scourge of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) peddler.

The web magazine .Net posted what to me is a surprising article this week (surprising in that I thought we all knew this stuff): The top 10 SEO myths. I am going to recap them here, although you should go to the article itself for more detail and the full list of reader comments. Remember, these are myths, which means they are not true.

1. Satisfaction, guaranteed;
2. A high Google PageRank = high ranking;
3. Endorsed by Google;
4. Meta tag keywords matter;
5. Cheat your way to the top;
6. Keywords? Cram 'em in;
7. Spending money on Google AdWords boosts your rankings;
8. Land here;
9. Set it and forget it;
10. Rankings aren't the only fruit.

The problem here is that for those of us who know better, this is a list that could easily be ten years old (with a couple obvious exceptions, like the reference to AdWords). For those who don't know better or who haven't had the experience, this might be new stuff. For our clients, this is almost always new stuff and SEO snake oil salesmen capitalize on that lack of knowledge to sell false promises and packs of lies. One of my colleagues recently had to pull one of our clients back from the brink and his ongoing frustration is evident in his own retelling:

I have a client who recently ended an SEO engagement with another firm because they wouldn’t explain how they executed their strategies. Their response to his inquiry was to ask for $6,000 / month, up from $2,000 / month for the same work in two new keywords.

This kind of thing happens all the time. I recently ran into another SEO "guru" selling his wares by promising to keep a site's meta tags up-to-date through a monthly payment plan. When I explained that Google doesn't use meta tags in ranking, his response was that I was wrong. When I pointed him to a two-year-old official Google video where a Google representative explains that meta tags are not used, his response was to state that he believed Google still uses them because he sees results from his work. My client was smart enough to end that engagement, but not all are.

Because I cannot protect my clients in person all the time, I have tried to write materials to educate them. For our content management system, QuantumCMS, I have posted tips for our clients, sometimes as a reaction to an SEO salesman sniffing around and sometimes to try to head that off. A couple examples:

• Verified: Google Ignores Meta Keywords
• SEO Spammers Using Your Contact Form

Along with these client-facing tips I sometimes get frustrated enough to write posts like this, trying to remind people that SEO is not some magical rocket surgery and that those who claim it is should be ignored. I've picked a couple you may read if you are so inclined:

• Verified: Google Ignores Meta Keywords
• Derek Powazek on SEO as Snake Oil

And because I still have to cite this meta tags video far far too often, I figured I'd just re-embed it here:

Related

My ire doesn't stop at SEO self-proclaimed-gurus. I also think social media self-proclaimed-gurus are just the latest incarnation of that evil. Some examples:

• Followers, Likes and +1s as Meaningless as Hits
• Social Scoring As the New SEO
• Lots of Twitter Followers Guarantees... Nothing

Telling Clients They Are Wrong

If you have spent time as a solo web jockey or your job has you interacting directly with clients, you've probably been faced with the client who asks for something you feel is wrong. If you're new to this, it may seem like a dangerous situation to be in, when in reality it's a great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert and demonstrate you considerable knowledge with well-formed arguments and supporting data/examples. Sometimes the client just isn't quite getting it and it gets a bit adversarial.

I have spent a good deal of time coaching friends, employees, partners, and so on (designers, developers, architects, etc.) on the best ways to deal with clients who have trundled down the wrong path and need some correction. Usually these people feel a great deal of trepidation in realigning the client for fear of losing the business or, worse, being overridden and forced to create something with which they don't agree (but will bear their names).

Conveniently, I don't have to reiterate all the options and steps you can take. Somebody has done a pretty good job of outlining them for me. You can read the full article, How To Explain To Clients That They Are Wrong, to get all the details. You can also read a little behind-the-scenes at the author's blog. It may be worth keeping this client perspective in mind, as mentioned in the article:

...[M]any clients still regard creative digital agencies and freelancers as either kids living in their parents' basement or shady professionals out to take them for every last penny.

For those of you who just want the distilled version, here you go, with some of my own tips peppered within...

First, determine if the client is even wrong or this is just a knee-jerk reaction on your part. As freelancers, it's easy to let your ego get the best of you. Remember, the client knows his/her business, you know the technology or design rules.

Next, speak the client's language. Ask the client what the business benefit is of the request. Don't try to snow the client with techno-babble or designer-speak. If you can get the client to verbalize the business goal, you are off to a good start. If the client cannot verbalize it, perhaps the client will realize that the request is couched in vanity instead of a tangible reason.

As part of all this make sure you come off as the expert. Dress well. Speak well. Spell well. Brand yourself well. Grammarify well. Make up new words well. Be confident, support your opinions with examples and facts, and be prepared to offer alternatives (hybrid solutions even). And don't be late (to meetings, on deadlines, to bed).

Don't hide from the client or the issue, address it quickly, in person (or perhaps on the phone, but not via email) and with supporting documentation (sign-off letters, email verification). I am a fan of the direct approach. Like a Band-Aid, just tear it off, it will be over more quickly. The article I am referencing is a little less aggressive about being direct, but if you are honest and humble (add some humor) then you should be fine.

If the client is insistent, you may need to back down. The client is the one paying, after all, and if you can document that you have attempted to prevent the client from shooting his/herself in the foot, then you will be fine. Consider making the client sign off that he/she is going against your recommendation. If that's too aggressive, just send an email verification. If you are familiar with A/B testing, now is a great time to propose it. If you aren't, you should go buy a book. In the end, spend some time looking at the results of the change to see if it ended up being more effective.

If you've gotten this far, then you should also go read the comments at the original article. There are some good ones in there, sprinkled among the self-aggrandizing ones.