You may remember our previous post about how Microsoft is ending Internet Explorer in 2021. As web developers we see this as good news!
The phasing out has officially begun. Starting in recent versions of Microsoft Edge, when Internet Explorer visits an incompatible site, the browsing session will automatically be launched in Microsoft Edge to continue the browsing session.
What does that mean? Well, if a visitor to a site is still using Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft keeps a list of incompatible sites and will automatically force the visitor to open the site in Microsoft Edge.
This special list is maintained by Microsoft, and is starting with big sites. Notably on the list are YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, StackOverflow, StackExchange, VK, ESPN, Chase, Hotstar, Moneygram, eharmony, and GoDaddy, just to name a few. These sites all dropped Internet Explorer support already.
It’s going to take a while for this process to trickle down, but we’re already seeing less IE11 traffic and more Edge traffic on our client sites.
Here’s more information from ZDNet and Bleeping Computer.
Oct 26, 2020 at 10:39 am by David
Posted in News |
The browser will be finished on 17 August, 2021, says Microsoft.
Starting November of this year, Microsoft Office 365 Apps will start to stop working in Internet Explorer 11. Also on the chopping block is the non-Chromium version of Microsoft Edge.
You may not realize this, but Internet Explorer causes lots of headaches for web development. While it used to be the most used browser, now its outdated engine and rendering creates idiosyncrasies that web developers have to work around. So, in that respect, this is good news for your website, and will hopefully save you a little money.
At the same time, it’s a little bit of bad news. Microsoft’s new Edge browser is based on Google’s Chromium, which is the same source the Google’s Chrome is generated from. That means the browsers are homogenizing around a single platform. This is what happened back in the Internet Explorer 6 days and caused compatibility problems with web code and browser code. Here’s hoping we don’t end up in that boat again.
Read the blog announcement from Microsoft here.
Aug 21, 2020 at 11:54 am by David
Posted in News |
This article came across my news feed today. It struck a chord as Web Services has been working with clients who are developing their own Web Developer talents. It’s an interesting new consulting track we are getting into as we learn different clients developer’s have various levels of skill – but all consider themselves web developers. Its a world…
Web Development is a complex thing and so many parts to it. Not everyone can know them all and there is always constant learning. Choosing the right skill set for your developer is important – see this article on CUSO Magazine. You need someone who knows the right parts to make you project successful, but also one that is not going to cost an arm and a leg. This is one of the reasons having a team, like CU*Answers Web Services, where individuals support each other’s knowledge and skill deficits works well.
Anyway, back to the article. This article is a visual roadmap of all the things you might need to learn as a front end developer for a website. Not all websites require all these tools and concepts, but your web developer should probably be aware of most of them. This roadmap is also changing as new tools and security concepts emerge.
Take a look at the article. I hope you appreciate all that’s involved in web development. Its not all just pretty pictures and HTML Code.
You’re not going to guess what the Web Services Team did a lot of this week. Maybe you are. This past week we published a bunch of alerts on credit union websites about this virus thing everyone is talking about. A people virus, not a computer virus.
Luckily, CU*Answers Web Services was prepared for this. We’ve published special alerts on credit union websites before for things like weather related closings, power outages or telephone troubles at branches. If your credit union website is on our WordPress with SiteControl platform, we have the ability to turn on Notifications Bars.
Notification Bars appear at the very top of your website to highlight an important notice for your members. These notification bars are highly customizable and mobile responsive. Here’s a screenshot of a site with a live notification bar enabled:
If you have a need for an alert to your members on your site — and who doesn’t this week? — let us know. We can enable this feature and the content is manageable in your WordPress dashboard. Also we’re happy to add the content for you, just let us know what you would like it to read.
I’m sure you are not all tracking the development life cycle of WordPress, luckily you have CU*Answers Web Services who is.
The next update to WordPress is currently being beta tested and is expected to roll out at the end of March. Our CU*Answers Web Services hosting infrastructure will begin deploying this update as it becomes available. These automatic deployments and updates help keep your website secure from the ne’er-do-wells who out and about probing at websites for vulnerabilities.
We do not anticipate any problems with this WordPress update. The focus is on continuing to update the Gutenberg Block editor. This is a new way to edit your website content. CU*Answers Web Services has been trying this new editor on some new site builds as well as some internal sites.
Read more about what is coming up in WordPress 5.4 in this WPTavern Article.
Web Browser are constantly changing and last week we had a big change from Microsoft. The new version of Microsoft Edge uses the same rendering engine as Google’s Chrome. That means that websites viewed in the newest Microsoft Edge browser will look more like they are viewed in Google Chrome versus how they look in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 11.
You may not notice that your website actually looks a little different in each browser, but our web developers do. We spend a fair amount of time creating websites that are as close to standard compliant as possible because it is our belief that all web browsers are working towards the standards. Long term, this reduces maintenance. It also helps with conforming to WCAG accessibility guidelines.
Our developer’s spend time checking your website in the major browsers, notably during new website builds, but also when making larger maintenance updates to your site. In general, we only support the last 2 major versions of the major browsers, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Microsoft Edge/Internet Explorer 11 (that counts as 2). For what it’s worth, Microsoft doesn’t even want you to use Internet Explorer anymore if you don’t have to.
We’ve already been looking at your sites in the new Microsoft Edge browser, so as it rolls out to everyone’s workstations over the next few weeks your site is already set.
Read more about what to expect with Microsoft Edge
