As new browser versions are released the iCIT Web Team rigorously tests each major version for changes that may harm your browsing experience. In the last month we’ve been a little over loaded in testing Safari 4, Firefox 3.5 and our continued testing of IE 8.

After initial analysis we have green lighted Firefox 3.5 for support on UW-W web sites. This doesn’t mean that campus systems are unaffected by the update but as you browse www.uww.edu you should not be affected. At this time we are still testing IE 8 and safari 4 and recommend campus staff not upgrade to the latest versions of these two browsers. For those who have IE 8 We have forced the IE 7 compatibility mode on until we are ready to support IE 8.

Please see the iCIT blog for more information on our browser support project.

After a number of betas and release candidates Miscrosoft quitely released IE 8 last week. As with any new browser release there will be some issues that pop-up with some of our web pages, the iCIT web team has taken a proactive approach on IE 8 and using the built-in compatiblity mode option in IE 8 to force, for now, all pages on www.uww.edu, library.uww.edu and uc.uww.edu into IE 7 compliance mode, until a time when we can ensure that these sites and pages are IE 8 compliant at which time we will unlock the sites from their compatability mode. For the official iCIT response to IE 8 see the iCIT blog. 

For the official Browser support guide, see our chart on the web team website.

September 3rd Google Officially launched it’s own forey into the browser game. It’s Browser called Chrome is a lightweight, multi-threaded, WebKit based browser. Using the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari Browser came as a surprise to me as Google has been very friendly to the Mozilla Foundation for years, the makers of Firefox, in fact Google injects a good deal of the foundation’s income through a partnership to have the default Firefox page a Google search page. These technicalities aside I think it’s clear that Chrome is not meant to be your everyday browser. You’ll still use Firefox or IE or Safari for that; what Chrome is meant to do it is provide a sand boxed environment for web applications to run in, so that if an application crashes it only takes that tab with it and not the whole browser.

I think that Google might have started to create something that will be helpful, not right now, but in the near future as companies start to roll out more SAAS applications and the need to run multiple web applications at a time is more commonplace. Currently the only real advantage to Chrome is if you use AJAX heavy web applications where Chrome’s new JavaScript parser “V8″ excels.

Will people use it this way only time will tell.

Yesterday Apple released the final patches to safari 3 to clean up a nasty vulnerability that allowed remote execution of code. All safari users should make sure they update to version 3.1.2.  Also last month Firefox 3 officially launched on June 11th. Currently we are testing both browsers against our current sites and services. Most services and sits that functioned in Firefox 2 will also work in Firefox 3. However there are large differences between safari 2 and 3 so we are leaving Firefox 3 and Safari 3 as a tier two browsers until we can officially support them. Happy browsing! and please send us an email if you find a page that doesn’t work right in FF 3 or safari 3.

With the release of IE8 beta 1 yesterday to developers/public, the web is becoming an exciting and scary place. Once released into production IE8 will round out the group of having all four of the major browsers, those being: IE8, FireFox 3, safari 3 and opera 9, being for the most part standards compliant and all passing the Acid2 CSS test. Which should allow web designers and developers to provide better consistency across all updated browsers.

This however still brings the question of old browsers and legacy/third party web applications that require older and for the most part specific versions of a browser and can we fully support web standards and at the same time ensure that these older and out of date browsers can still use the website in a acceptable manner that is the challenge that we face as web designers.