How Internet Explorer 9 Will Affect CPA Firms and CPA Websites
Well, IE9 has been public for long enough to test-drive now, and my judgment has jelled. IE9 is Microsoft's newest browser version, but unless you enjoy browser games it's not exactly a blessing to the accounting industry. This was the first new version of Microsoft's internet browser in 2 years. This "improvement" is tardy and falls short. With the dawn of CSS3 and HTML5 something certainly needed to be done. In this article, we'll take a look at IE9 and try to understand how it will change the way accounting websites are designed.
Better Interactive Animations
The biggest improvement to IE9 is also the most useless to me as an accounting website designer. Still, in the interest of fairness and balance let's take a look at hardware acceleration. Hardware acceleration helps web pages display complex, interactive graphics. If you have ever played a Facebook game like Farmville, you'll notice that your browser will likely encounter lag or a drop in frames per second (FPS) when you were viewing an area of the game that had a lot of activity. With hardware acceleration this lag or drop in FPS should be reduced or not even happen!
Operating System Compatibility
This really ticks me off. We could use IE9 to it's full (if limited) potential and you may very well not be able to see the changes. IE9 doesn't support the XP operating system. This is a big deal from a web designers point of view. XP is more than 40% of the market so a LOT of users can't benefit from the browsers new functionality. Next in line was Windows 7 at ~26% and then Windows Vista at roughly 14% market share. It makes no sense that IE9 won't work with XP. There are more XP users than Vista and Win 7 combined!
There's no technical reason XP couldn't run it. Microsoft is trying to force computer owners to upgrade using a tried and true manufacturing technique called "Built in Obsolescence". Microsoft wants to phase out Windows XP, but we both know that a lot of your clients and prospects won't be bullied into buying a new OS or computer just so they can use a new browser. For the few that do care they can always just use a different browser. Current versions of Google Chrome and Firefox 10 both have hardware acceleration.
Inadequate CSS3 Support
There's no way to be nice about this. IE9's CSS3 support is a HUGE disappointment. CSS is very important to web development. It allows designers to declare defaults (fonts, colors, etc) and standards for specific documents. CSS3 offers a lot of opportunities for us as website designers in terms of the aesthetics of your site. It allows us to do more with less code, making your online documents smaller, better looking, faster loading, and easier for search engines to index. CSS3 supports a whole host of new style elements that IE9 does not. I got pretty excited when I heard that IE9 was bragging about HTML5 and CSS3 support. I honestly believed that Microsoft was going to stop treating it's browser users like a bunch of inept technophobes. Boy was I wrong.
I could see some of these properties being usable in future releases. Truth is I haven't been paying that much attention and by now I should hope some of them already have. We're just using the new standards (which other browsers DO support) and hoping that IE catches up at some point. However, I see no excuse to why Microsoft couldn't integrate the properties of border image, text shadow, and gradients into IE9. These three properties alone would virtually eliminate the need to produce images for certain styles of text that a designer might want to use in a web design.
For shame, Microsoft. For shame.
Overview
OK, this is a better browser than IE8. That said, as an accounting website designer I'm VERY disappointed. I'm furious that they chose not to support XP; and they're not fooling anyone: this was a choice. The CSS3 support just made me wince. IE9 is only a marginal improvement, worth downloading and using if you're currently on IE8 but certainly not worthy of the fanfare it received and certainly not on par competing browsers with Firefox and Chrome.
For now Internet Explorer is bound to persist in being a "granny browser". For the time being I still suggest Firefox. Chrome has already developed into being a solid contender however, and if it wasn't for some technical difficulties we've had with it's abbreviated treatment of Java and functionality with the file transfer protocol that comes bundled with our accounting websites, I might very well change that sometime.