Rey Bango

JavaScript, HTML, CSS & Random Stuff…

Jan 9, 2012 3

Fix Common IE Problems: Update your Docmode for Web Standards

Document compatibility defines how a browser renders your website. The more specific you are at telling the browser what to expect, the better the experience for your users. When using web standards like HTML5, start by explicitly declaring the HTML5 document type:

<!DOCTYPE html>

This markup triggers standards mode in Internet Explorer 9 and 10. And it also works well in Chrome and Firefox. Four steps will get your site ready for many browsers and devices:

Step 1: Validate that your site uses standards mode

Check whether or not your site is currently in standards mode:

  1. Open the website in IE10 platform preview.
    • Note: You can also follow the same steps to update the docmode for IE9 only without downloading the preview.
  2. Press F12 to launch the IE Developer Tools or find it on the Tools menu as shown below:

    • Note: If you’re not familiar with using the IE F12 Developer Tools to debug your webpages, please read the following tutorial.
  3. Check if your site indicates Browser Mode: IE10 and Document Mode: IE10 standards as shown in the toolbar below:

    Click to Enlarge
  4. If your site is in Browser Mode: IE10 and Document Mode: IE10 Standards, you’re done! Note if the Browser Mode and Document Mode of your site are different than above. A common example is Browser Mode = IE8 and Document Mode = Quirks which indicates that your website was designed for older versions of IE and may not be ready for web standards.

    Click to Enlarge

Step 2: Implement docmode for web standards

Force IE10 standards mode to test your website:

  1. Insert 
    <!DOCTYPE html>

    into your website’s HTML page

    • Learn more about how to update your doctypes here
  2. Reload your page in the browser and check the Browser Mode and Document Mode again using the F12 Developer Tools. If Browser Mode: IE10 and Document Mode: IE10 standards are not shown, continue below.

Step 3: Determine why your site is not in Standards Mode

Most problems are related to supporting older versions of IE. Start by ensuring your standards-based code is rendered in IE9 and 10. Then keep your non-standards-based code for older versions of IE.

  1. My page is not in Browser Mode: IE10

    • Possible Cause: Your website may flagged in Compatibility View and forced into an older browser mode to ensure the site functions
      • Resolution: Check if your site is on the list here. Learn more about the Compatibility View list and request removal here.
  2. My page is not in Document Mode = IE10
    • Possible Cause: Your website’s doctype is invalid or missing

      • Resolution: Check for a valid, well-formed doctype like:

        <!DOCTYPE html>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

        Learn more about how to update your doctypes here.

      • Possible Cause: Docmode being forced via X-UA-Compatible meta tag

        • Resolution: Check for code similar to this in the of the page.

          <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" >
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" >

          Remove it and reload your page. Continue testing. Learn more about Specifying Document Compatibility Modes here.

Step 4: Resolve common IE problems when updating docmode

Most problems are related to supporting older versions of IE. Start by ensuring your standards-based code is rendered in IE9 and 10. Then keep your non-standards-based code for older versions of IE.

  • Possible Cause: Conditional comments support browser version-specific features

    • Resolution: Check for conditional comments that run non-standard code. These are often used on specific features supported by older versions of IE to allow the page to degrade gracefully. Check for code similar to this:

      <!--[if IE 8]>

<p>Welcome to Internet Explorer 8.</p>

<![endif]-->

      Remove it and reload your page. Continue testing. Learn more about Conditional Comments here.

  • Possible Cause: User agent sniffing supports browser version-specific features
    • Resolution: Check for user agent sniffing. These are often used to specifically target a browser based on the user agent string presented via the browser mode. Check for code similar to this:

      if (version = /MSIE (\d+\.\d+)/.exec(navigator.userAgent)) {

	isIE = true;

browserVersion = parseFloat(version[1]);
}

      Start by implementing feature detection where possible with web standards. Learn more about User-Agent Strings here. The IE10 User-Agent String is located here.

Other reasons my page does not render correctly:

  • Possible Cause: Your website may be using browser specific features that are no longer supported. Use web standards whenever possible.

  • Possible Cause: Your website may be using 3rd party plug-ins or like Flash, Quicktime, and Silverlight that are no longer supported by the IE10 metro. Use web standards whenever possible.
    • Resolution: Learn how to create plug-in free experiences. A complete step-by-step guide will be available shortly.
  • Possible Cause: Your website may be loading browser version-specific CSS files:
    • Resolution: Ensure layout is avoiding CSS hacks where possible. Learn more about investigating CSS issues here.

A list of common problems is available in the IE Compatibility Cookbook.

If you’re unable to update your docmode with these resolution steps, tweet us @IE or check the Forums on MSDN.

For further detail, try these articles:

Oct 18, 2011 0

Site Pinning: Rotating Overlay Icons for Multiple Service Notifications

In my last post, I went over how to use IE9′s Site Pinning API to implement overlay icons to enhance user notifications. The demo focused on how to display a numeric icon to indicate when a specific event (e.g.: messages in an inbox) had occurred.


Pinned site with overlay icon

It’s a really great way of letting your users know that there’s pending information for them to check into. But what happens if your site offers multiple types of notifications? With websites offering so much functionality nowadays, it’s pretty common for them to also serve up multiple types of notifications, from friend requests and event reminders to new messages and game invites.

Rotating Multiple Overlays Icons

The great thing about the Site Pinning API is that it’s very flexible and through some JavaScript magic, you can easily display multiple overlay icons for the various services you have. In this demo, I want to rotate through 3 different overlay icons that alert the user to pending messages, requests and actions.

As before, I had to flex some of my artistic talent by creating the overlay icons using the x-icon editor. I created 5 of each and here’s how the first three look:

The code changed slightly from the last demo in order to accommodate multiple bits of data per fetch. While previously, I was only fetching one piece of data, in this demo, I’m returning 3, one for each notification type:

 myPin.init([{ "data" : [{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 2 }, { "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 1 }, { "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 3 }] },
		        { "data" : [{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 1 }, { "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 5 }, { "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 2 }] },
		        { "data" : [{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 5 }, { "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 1 }, { "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 4 }] }
			   ]);

As a reminder, the method getData() simulates grabbing remote data. So if we look at the data above, we can simulate pulling back three distinct bits of data. This is why we call the method every 10 seconds using setInterval. This allows us to see how notifications might look over a period of time. 

setInterval(function () { myPin.getData() }, 10000);

The next thing that changed is the use of a timer to allow a slight delay while rendering the overlay icons. Using setTimeout() provides enough of delay so that an individual overlay icon is visible to the user before rotating on to the next icon. If we didn’t have this delay, the rotation would be way too fast to provide any useful notification. If we look at the following image, we can see what the notification will look like:


Overlay icon showing numeric notification

This is accomplished via the following code:

// Grab the current set of data...
currData = this.dataBin[this.currIndex++].data;		

/* We're going to display a new overlay every x number of seconds to display a new overlay icon so
   let's loop through the data elements for the current set of data... */
for (var i=0; i < currData.length; i++ ){

	(function(idx) { setTimeout( function(){ myPin.dispOverlay( currData[idx] ); }, 1000 * idx); }( i ));					

}

Here’s what’s happening. In the first line, I grab the current set of data that holds all of the notification information (messages, requests & actions). That data looks like this:

[{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 2 },
{ "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 1 },
{ "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 3 }]

I loop through each group of data and assign a timer using setTimeout() that will call dispOverlay() at ~1 second intervals. That’s the magic code that allows for the gradual icon rendering delay I mentioned before. The expected functionality is that the “messages” icon will render followed by the “requests” icon 1 second later, and then finally the “actions” icon.

Now, you might be wondering why I have an anonymous function wrapping the setTimeout(). It’s because I have a closure within setTimeout which can cause a common scoping issue in which the variable ‘i’, which I use to grab the current index of data, will only be updated to the last index value. James Padolsey has a great explanation on it and thanks to John David Dalton for helping me troubleshoot this.

The final change is in dispOverlay() in which I need to determine which overlay icon needs to display. Since I now have three different types of notifications, I need a conditional statement to determine the type and build the correct icon name:

if (theData.ntype == "M") {
	oImg = "images/messages-" + theData.num + ".ico";
} else if (theData.ntype == "R") {
	oImg = "images/requests-" + theData.num + ".ico";
} else if (theData.ntype == "A") {
	oImg = "images/actions-" + theData.num + ".ico";
}

This checks the type and serves up the right icon based on the type and the number of notifications pending for that type.

The Demo and Final Code

You can check out the demo by going here in IE9:

http://reybango.com/demos/sprotate/index.html

When the page renders, drag the tab down to your taskbar and pin it. You should see a new window appear with your newly pinned site. Next, you’ll see the overlay icons appear in the taskbar and they should begin to cycle every 10 seconds.

Here’s the full source code. You can also download everything here. 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Pinned Site - Rotating Overlay Icons</title>
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="favicon.ico" />
<meta name="application-name" content="Pinned Site Test" />
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://reybango.com/demos/sprotate/index.html" />
<meta name="msapplication-navbutton-color" content="#3480C0" />
<meta name="msapplication-window" content="width=1024;height=768" />
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Testing the Pinned Site API" />
<style>
body {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #4492CE;
    font: 440%/1.4em 'Segoe Light',Segoe,'Segoe UI','Meiryo Regular','Meiryo',sans-serif;
    color: #EDEFF4;
}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<div>
<h1>Pinned Sites</h1>
<p>Rotating Overlay Icons</p>
</div>

<script>

	var myData = [];

    var myPin = {

        currIndex: 0,
        dataBin: [],

        getData: function () {

			var idx = 0, currData = [], cntr = 0, theData;

            // Determines whether the current page was launched as a pinned site...
            if (window.external.msIsSiteMode()) {

				// Grab the current set of data...
				currData = this.dataBin[this.currIndex++].data;		

				/* We're going to display a new overlay every x number of seconds to display a new overlay icon so
				   let's loop through the data elements for the current set of data... */
				for (var i=0; i < currData.length; i++ ){

					(function(idx) { setTimeout( function(){ myPin.dispOverlay( currData[idx] ); }, 1e3 * idx); }( i ));					

				}

				if (this.currIndex > 2) { this.currIndex = 0 }

            }

        },

        dispOverlay: function (theData) {

            var oImg = "";

            // Is there any data?
            if (theData) {

                // Clear any preexisting overlay icon
                window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay();

				// Render the overlay icon based on the data returned...
				if (theData.ntype == "M") {
					oImg = "images/messages-" + theData.num + ".ico";
				} else if (theData.ntype == "R") {
					oImg = "images/requests-" + theData.num + ".ico";
				} else if (theData.ntype == "A") {
					oImg = "images/actions-" + theData.num + ".ico";
				}				

                // Go ahead and create the overlay image and it's label...
                this.setOverlay(oImg, theData.label);

            }

        },

        setOverlay: function (icon, desc) {

            // Sets the overlay icons...
            window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay(icon, desc);
            window.external.msSiteModeActivate();

        },

        init: function (myData) {

            this.dataBin = myData;
			this.getData();

        }

    };

    // This clears out any previously set overlay icons...
    window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay();

    // Run it once to kick everything off...
    myPin.init([{ "data" : [{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 2 }, { "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 1 }, { "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 3 }] },
		        { "data" : [{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 1 }, { "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 5 }, { "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 2 }] },
		        { "data" : [{ "label" : "Messages", "ntype" : "M", "num": 5 }, { "label" : "Requests", "ntype" : "R", "num": 1 }, { "label" : "Actions", "ntype" : "A", "num": 4 }] }
			   ]);

    // This is only here because I want to simulate pulling data on a regular interval...
    setInterval(function () { myPin.getData() }, 10000);

</script>
</body>
</html>

Oct 10, 2011 5

Using Site Pinning and Overlay Icons for Enhanced User Notifications and Engagement

I was recently doing some testing of IE9′s Site Pinning API and found out about a cool bit of functionality that can enhance user notifications. If you’re not familiar with site pinning, it’s a great way to allow users to have easy and quick access to their favorite sites via the Windows taskbar. There’s a really nice overview on Beauty of the Web that explains how it works.

Keeping Users Up-to-Date

One of the features the API provides is the notion of notifications that can allow developers to provide alerts to end users. The functionality allows you to dynamically insert custom overlay icons that can alert users when an important bit of information is available. These overlay icons are rendered over the favicon that is pinned to the taskbar. If you look at the image below, you can see it in action:


Pinned site with no overlay icon


Pinned site with overlay icon

So if you think about the possibilities, any site that offers users an inbox, special deals or sends out time-sensitive alerts could use this notification capability to keep their users up-to-date and more engaged on the site. Sites like the Huffington Post have already discovered that users that pinned HuffPost spent 49% more time on the site.

The best part is that adding this capability is insanely easy.

Setting it Up

For this post, we’re not going to go into the basics of how to pin a site. If you want to learn more, here’s a GREAT resource for getting you up to speed quickly: BuildMyPinnedSite.com. In fact, I used that site to help get me up-to-speed on the basics and it’s well-worth visiting.

To add notifications, you’ll need a couple of things:

  • A cool favicon for your site. If you don’t have one, you can use the handy web-based X-Icon Editor to create one.
  • A set of overlay icons to use. The recommended size is 16×16.

The API is JavaScript-based and we’ll use the following methods:

window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay()
window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay()
window.external.msSiteModeActivate()
window.external.msIsSiteMode()

The window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay method is used to clear out any previously set overlay icons. window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay allows you to specify the name of the notification icon as well as a accessible description. Lastly, we’ll use window.external.msSiteModeActivate to flash the pinned icon to notify the user of the update. Lastly, window.external.msIsSiteMode will let us know if the page was launched as a pinned site, thus allowing us to better determine when to run the code.

For the overlay icons, I’m using five images that display numbers 1 through 5 respectively to designate the number of messages are in a user’s inbox.

The Code

The first thing I need to add is the reference to my favicon. Note that if you don’t add one, then the Internet Explorer’s icon will be used by default.

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="favicon.ico" />

Next, I want to create some sample data to work with. What I want to do for my demo is to have the overlay icon dynamically change every 5 seconds to simulate a more real-world scenario. The data is a simple array containing JSON data in each element. 

myPin.init([{ "num": 1, "label": "Label 1" },
                { "num": 2, "label": "Label 2" },
                { "num": 3, "label": "Label 3" },
                { "num": 4, "label": "Label 4" },
                { "num": 5, "label": "Label 5" }
                ]);

By setting a timer, I’ll be able to pull a new set of data every 5 seconds. 

setInterval(function () { myPin.getData(); }, 5000);

The main thing to keep in mind is that I’m “simulating” getting data from some remote host. In reality, all that the myPin.getData() method does is use a running counter to grab a new set of data and render a new overlay icon:

getData: function () {
            // A function that just simulates returning a result set...
            var idx = 0;

            // Determines whether the current page was launched as a pinned site.
            if (window.external.msIsSiteMode()) {

                idx = this.currIndex++;
                this.currIndex = (this.currIndex < 5) ? this.currIndex : 0;

                this.dispOverlay(this.dataBin[idx]);

            }

}

As you can see, it uses the running counter var currIndex to determine which array element to grab and then passes the data to dispOverlay(). This is where we use window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay() to clear out any previously displayed overlay icons and also generate a string for the actual icon name. You can see that the oImg var is created on the fly based on the data we’re using. 

dispOverlay: function (theData) {

            var oImg = "";

            // Is there any data?
            if (theData) {

                // Clear any preexisting overlay icon
                window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay();

                // Create the image string...
                oImg = "images/num_" + theData.num + ".ico";

                // Go ahead and create the overlay image and it's label...
                this.setOverlay(oImg, theData.label);

            }

}

That icon name, along with the accessible label text for the icon, is passed to setOverlay() which sets the overlay icon via window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay and flashes the taskbar icon using window.external.msSiteModeActivate.

setOverlay: function (icon, desc) {

            // Sets the overlay icons...
            window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay(icon, desc);
            window.external.msSiteModeActivate();

}

Test it Out

To test this out, it’s a simple matter of running your newly pinned page in Internet Explorer 9, grabbing the tab and dragging it down to your taskbar:


Tab being dragged to the taskbar


Pinned site with no overlay icon

Five seconds after the page has been pinned, the code will fire off the first notification and continue to cycle through the other icons every subsequent five seconds.


Pinned site with overlay icon

An important thing to remember is that the IE F12 Developer tools are available to you to use in debugging your pinned site. So if you run into quirks, simply press the F12 key and the tools will appear.

The Demo and Final Code

You can check out the demo I whipped up by going here in IE9:

http://reybango.com/demos/sitepinning/index.html

When the page renders, drag the tab down to your taskbar and pin it. You should see a new windows appear with your newly pinned site. Five seconds later, you’ll see the first overlay icon appear in the taskbar.

Here’s the full source code. You can also download everything here. The really great part is that it isn’t a lot of code to implement this. In fact, to use the API only required 4 method calls. The bulk of the code was to simulate pulling in data. And the “>impact on user engagement is certainly worth adding in the capability.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Pinned Site Test</title>
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="favicon.ico" />
<meta name="application-name" content="Pinned Site Test" />
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://reybango.com/demos/sitepinning/index.html" />
<meta name="msapplication-navbutton-color" content="#3480C0" />
<meta name="msapplication-window" content="width=1024;height=768" />
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Testing the Pinned Site API" />
<style>
body {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #4492CE;
    color: #EDEFF4;
}

h1 {
    float: left;
    font: 440%/1.4em 'Segoe Light',Segoe,'Segoe UI','Meiryo Regular','Meiryo',sans-serif;
    margin-left: 10px;
    position: relative;
}
</style>

</head>

<body>

<h1>Pinned Site Test</h1>

<div></div>

<script>

    var myPin = {

        currIndex: 0,
        dataBin: [],

        getData: function () {
            // A function that just simulates returning a result set...
            var idx = 0;

            // Determines whether the current page was launched as a pinned site.
            if (window.external.msIsSiteMode()) {

                idx = this.currIndex++;
                this.currIndex = (this.currIndex < 5) ? this.currIndex : 0;

                this.dispOverlay(this.dataBin[idx]);

            }

        },

        setOverlay: function (icon, desc) {

            // Sets the overlay icons...
            window.external.msSiteModeSetIconOverlay(icon, desc);
            window.external.msSiteModeActivate();

        },

        dispOverlay: function (theData) {

            var oImg = "";

            // Is there any data?
            if (theData) {

                // Clear any preexisting overlay icon
                window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay();

                // Create the image string...
                oImg = "images/num_" + theData.num + ".ico";

                // Go ahead and create the overlay image and it's label...
                this.setOverlay(oImg, theData.label);

            }

        },

        init: function (myData) {

            this.dataBin = myData;

        }

    };

    // This clears out any previously set overlay icons...
    window.external.msSiteModeClearIconOverlay();

    // Run it once to kick everything off...
    myPin.init([{ "num": 1, "label": "Label 1" },
                { "num": 2, "label": "Label 2" },
                { "num": 3, "label": "Label 3" },
                { "num": 4, "label": "Label 4" },
                { "num": 5, "label": "Label 5" }
                ]);

    // This is only here because I want to simulate pulling data on a regular interval...
    setInterval(function () { myPin.getData(); }, 5000);

</script>
</body>
</html>

Learn JavaScript!

What to Read to Get Up to Speed in JavaScript.

The best books & blogs for learning JavaScript development. Broken down by experience levels!


My BIG LIST of JavaScript, CSS & HTML Development Tools, Libraries, Projects, and Books.

Constantly updated with the latest and greatest tools. Check it out!

Contact Me

GMail: reybango at gmail dot com
Twitter: @reybango




JavaScript JS Documentation: JS Function Example: Specifying arguments with the Function constructor, JavaScript Function Example: Specifying arguments with the Function constructor

Twitter

Rey Bango is Stephen Fry proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache