Internet Explorer still dominates browser stakes

Internet Explorer still holds a dominating 60% market share in web browsers. With all the hype around Google Chrome and Firefox, its easy to forget that most users are actually quite happy with IE. With IE9 due out very soon (update: IE9 is out now), Microsoft could even increase its browser share, as IE9 promises to pack some serious performance punch, thanks to its use of hardware accelerated graphics to render web pages faster than any current browser. However, it sounds like IE9 will not run on XP, which is a shame since it may mean IE6 lives a little longer yet. IE6 is notoriously difficult to for web developers to support due do the fact that it behaves a bit differently to most modern browsers in regards to many CSS and HTML constructs. Many long hours are often wasted trying to get a website to render perfectly in IE6. The frustration of web developers has spawned a whole movement dedicated to the eradication of IE6! Update: Microsoft themselves have put out a website dedicated to the demise of IE6.

If you want to see how the web looks through another browser, why not try one of these:

So how does this relate to EPiServer website development? While the global browser market share figures are important, it is also important to consider what browsers your website's visitors are using. For instance, in an Intranet, you may have complete control over the browser your users run. This means you can potentially design your page templates to optimise for a single browser, saving on cross browser testing.

However, I'd recommend that even in that case you would still be best to take the approach of using the most widely supported web standards (eg. CSS 2, HTML 4.01) and testing on at least the 3 major modern browsers: IE8, Firefox 3 and Chrome. If you are in a position to dictate the browser to use, choose one of those (or Safari) - but stick with IE8 if your organisation is Windows based. This will ensure that your site is at least using CSS and HTML in a way that is mutually agreeable to the modern browsers. I've excluded Safari as it uses the same Webkit rendering engine under the hood that Chrome uses, and renders pages identically to Chrome in nearly all cases. I've also excluded a version number from Chrome, because it updates itself to the latest version by default. Web developers will find that IE8, Firefox 3 and Chrome/Safari will render pages nearly identically most of the time. There are a few edge cases that will be different, and this is where it pays to do some cross browser testing. You will end with a largely standards-compliant site, and you'll save the pain of IE6 compatibility.

If your website is on the Internet, not Intranet, you are stuck with supporting IE6 for a little while yet. IE6 hangs in there doggedly at around 10% market share overall - still a little too big to ignore. It seems the only thing that will eliminate IE6 is the death of Windows XP. As users migrate to Windows 7, they will get IE8 automatically. XP (and IE6) will continue hanging in there until Microsoft stops supporting XP SP3, which looks a couple of years away yet, although it seems that Microsoft have not finalised this date.

Throwing out the bathwater

I was once a contractor involved in a web CMS platform migration where the client had a large investment in their existing website in terms of the content, layout, design, functionality and so on. Their content management system resulted in very fragmented storage of content across multiple silos, and required frequent interventions from the original developers, and in house IT staff, which was both costly and time consuming. All in all, a bit of a disaster in terms of architecture, resulting support costs, and the sheer time and effort required to make even minor content changes, let alone adding new application functionality. The website was a huge source of new customers, and sales, and therefore a critical piece of this medium-large enterprise.
If this sounds like a worst case scenario, you haven't seen inside too many businesses websites. This is not only a common situation, it's practically the norm.

What I hope to show is that the predominant way of thinking when fixing such a system is usually wrong.

The most common approach I see amongst stakeholders and technical staff when designing a roadmap to a better website is an approach based on a foundation of crippling caution and a sickening fear of disaster. To make matters worse, many staff involved in the implementation will decide that the project is doomed before it has started, and therefore start immediately to minimise their personal culpability, ready for when the proverbial hits the fan. But I digress.

The existing investment in the web site is often something that weighs to heavily on the business. Its the conclusion that "because we've invested $x million in this website, we cannot simply throw it away".

Lets take a closer look at that assumption.

1. What have you really invested in? When you look at where that investment has gone, it will be a combination of things like, hardware, licenses, staff salaries, third parties, web design, software development, testing, project management etc. Only the intellectual property that you have created is an asset of the business, the rest is an expense. You may have spent $5 million over 10 years, but your intellectual property asset, the value of the content created, is completely unrelated to that expense. It may be more or less valuable, depending on how well that content is able to drive revenue and profit. 
2. If what you have created is intellectual property, where is the intellectual property? What form does it take & what does it look like? I think the commonly held view is that a web page, like a document, is a self contained piece of intellectual property. The way the page looks an feels is assumed to be integrated with the content into a whole, but this is misleading. Content and presentation can easily be separated (this has been the point of HTML and CSS since the 1990's). Yes there is intellectual property in the appearance of the content, no doubt. But the larger the web site, then less of the asset is tied up in the cosmetic appearance of the content, and the more that is pure content.

Where am I going with this? I want to point out that when you have a large web site, chances are that the cosmetic appearance of the content is of very little value relative to the value of the content itself. Going back to our migration roadmap, the approach put forward by the business is usually to "migrate the content to a shiny new WCMS platform whilst keeping everything looking exactly the same". This is considered the safest approach ("hey we can just paste the HTML across"), but is in fact a very bad idea. Why? Well, for a start you are keeping the dirty bathwater in order to keep the baby, when the two are easily separable. Separate your content from its presentation. Secondly, you are never going to get a better opportunity to implement a substantial overhaul of the look and feel. Thirdly, you have probably grown very comfortable with your old site design, but chances are its not that great to someone with fresh eyes. And forth, your HTML and CSS is likely to have grown fat and bloated over the years as various people have had a go at altering it over the years, each looking at only one part, each with a different idea in mind.

The problem with keeping the old HTML and CSS is that you are actually making work for yourself, not saving work or reducing risk. Importing bloated, bad HTML and CSS into a new WCMS is going to take longer and cause more pain in the long run than writing clean HTML and CSS from scratch. This is because all that bloated code is going to take many hours for web developers to understand, and is going to cause inconsistencies across the site, and major headaches in testing.

The outcome of a major website migration is more likely to be successful when the business seizes the opportunity at hand, keeps the content, but re-designs the look and feel. Don't keep the bathwater to save the baby!

"Add This"

Ever wondered what all this is about?...

You may have seen this hundreds of times on various web pages without paying too much attention to it. But if you have a web site, its time you understood the relationship between "Add This" and your Google ranking. "Add This" is probably one of the easiest things you can do to enhance your Google page rank over time, for free. It works simply by making it easy for people to link to you. If your readers like your content, in one or two clicks they can share it via their favourite social site.

This has at least two significant effects on traffic to your web site. Firstly, you can expect to get direct traffic from social networking sites. Second, the link into your site will improve your ranking in Google, and drive search based traffic to your site.

Adding "Add This" to your site is trivial. You have little to lose and everything to gain from adding it to your site, so go ahead and give it a go. If you have an EPiServer site, I'd recommend you have your developer add it to selected page templates, such as those for news articles and events. You can also add it via the WYSIWYG editor, but for consistency it is better to have it built into the page.

Gartner Positions EPiServer as a Visionary

"EPiServer announced today that the company was evaluated and listed as a Visionary among Web Content Management (WCM) vendors in the 2010 Gartner report, “Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management.” The report, which analyzes a select group of vendors in the WCM market, evaluated EPiServer on its completeness of vision and ability to execute."
Source: Gartner Positions EPiServer as a Visionary

Gartner defines the Visionary category as:
"Visionaries are very forward-thinking and technically focused. For example, their products may have unique multilingual capabilities or be driving the inherent direction of the market through their innovation and product development. To become Leaders, they need to work on some of the core aspects of their offerings and increase their Ability to Execute. They may need to build financial strength, functional breadth, service and support, geographical coverage or sales and distribution channels. Their evolution may hinge on the acceptance of a new technology, or on the development of partnerships that complement their strengths."