Windows 10 and Internet Explorer
July 29th, 2015 by admin
July 29, 2015 Marked the Release of Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge Browser
At present, Atomic8ball supports the most current versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. These 4 browsers have consistently been the primary staple of traffic to our websites for years.
What Does "Supported" Mean?
While there may be slight inconsistencies in the browsers that may cause the appearance to be very slightly different between them, our goal is to confirm that there is a good user experience on each of the major browsers and that nothing has behaved improperly in a manner that impacts the end-user in a negative manner.
By and large, standards compliance among the browsers has improved to the point where the same HTML renders either the same, or extremely similarly, across them. The expectation at present is that the user experience should be the same 99.9% of the time, with exceptionally infrequent "special case" handling occurring.
So What's Changing?
When Windows 8.1 came out, we stopped supporting versions of Internet Explorer other than IE11. With the release of Windows 10 has come Microsoft Edge, a new, more modern browser from Microsoft that replaces Internet Explorer. While IE11 does remain part of the standard install for Windows 10, it is for legacy compatibility purposes only. Essentially, IE11 is locked in time to 2013.
What Impact Should Be Expected?
You should not experience any significant differences at this point in time. However, as time and technology continue to progress there will arise more and more circumstances where Internet Explorer 11 does not function properly, or fails entirely.
Towards that end, we strongly recommend phasing out all us of any version of IE in favor of using one of the modern browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge.
What if I Have a Special Case?
If you have a special case, then please discuss it with us.
Tags: Atomic8Ball, IE11, Internet Explorer, Windows
Posted in: announcement
Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11
October 17th, 2013 by admin
October 17, 2013 marked the release of Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11.
Historically, Atomic8Ball has supported the current version of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, as well as the 2 most recent versions of Internet Explorer. This means that when IE10 was the most current version of Internet Explorer, we also supported IE 8 and 9.
What does "supported" mean?
Part of our quality control process is to look at each update in the browsers that we support to confirm the visual appearance of the update. Slight inconsistencies between the browsers may cause styling to appear correct on two of them, but break in some fashion on the third one.
So what's changing?
Starting with IE9, each version of Internet Explorer has become increasingly more standards compliant, which is a good thing. During the life cycle of IE10, we never saw a single instance where the visual appearance between IE9 and IE10 was such that the display appeared correct in one, but broken in the other. If the update looked right in IE10 it looked right in IE9, but might look wrong in IE8. Testing has shown this to continue to be the case with IE11.
We are adjusting our quality control process to just look at the current version of Internet Explorer, the same that we do with other modern browsers.
What impact should be expected?
You shouldn't experience any differences, unless you or your clients are running Windows XP and are therefore unable to use modern versions of Internet Explorer. Please see the below list if IE version numbers and the minimum version of Windows required to run it.
IE version num - Minimum Windows version required
IE 7 (10/2006) - Windows XP SP2 (08/2004)
IE 8 (03/2009) - Windows XP SP2 (08/2004)
IE 9 (03/2011) - Windows Vista SP2 (04/2009)
IE10 (10/2012) - Windows 7 (10/2009)
IE11 (10/2013) - Win 8.1 now, coming soon to Windows 7 (10/2009)
There's really no expectation that anybody is using IE7, as any non-pirated version of Windows XP can run IE8. However, Windows XP is at the end of it's lifecycle, with legacy support ending April 8, 2014. For anybody presently using Windows XP and IE8, we recommend upgrading to a modern OS with and using a modern browser.
What if I have a special case?
If you have a special case, then please discuss it with us.
Tags: Internet Explorer, Windows, IE11
Posted in: announcement
