[Building Sakai] Sakai 2.9.1 and IE8

Fri Jun 14 07:04:06 PDT 2013

Hi Keli,

We haven't tested much with IE9, mostly because it hasn't been rolled out to labs etc. on campus. So you probably know more than I do about the IE9-specific issues. 

However, I did today test with an IE9 browser and can confirm that we're not seeing CSS support that one would expect (e.g. rounded corners) with our  "IE=8" setting.  The default "IE=EmulateIE9" breaks IE8 (for on-campus browsers which default to compatibility mode). Also we know "IE=EmulateIE8" doesn't work with Sakai 2.9.x CSS (for IE8 in compat mode) because that's what we started with. Setting " sakai.X-UA-Compatible=IE=8,IE=9" seems to give good results, i.e. doesn't break IE8 but does give IE9 CSS features though I haven't tested this much.

In IE8 you can tell whether the header value is effective for on-campus machines, because when it is, Tools / Compatibility View is greyed out and cannot be selected (regardless of the state of the Compatibility View Settings).

Googling suggested a whole lot of variations on how you could set this and what worked. It would be great if someone wrote a test plan for what to check (e.g. in our case the location of the 'my user' on the top of the portal moved to the far-left with IE8 in compat mode).

The sakai.properties setting is used to set an http header directly (rather than include it in the html source). E.g. if you run (or use Firebug or similar to look at http responses directly):

# curl --verbose --output /dev/null http://nightly2.sakaiproject.org:8087/portal/

you'll see the line

< X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE9

Regards
Stephen

---
Stephen Marquard, Acting Director
Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town
http://www.cet.uct.ac.za
stephen.marquard at uct.ac.za 
Phone: +27-21-650-5037 Cell: +27-83-500-5290 

-----Original Message-----
From: Keli Sato Amann [mailto:kamann at stanford.edu] 
Sent: 14 June 2013 12:39 AM
To: Stephen Marquard
Cc: sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Sakai 2.9.1 and IE8

Hi Stephen,
I'm wading into waters that are above my head, but I'll give it a try because I want to ask a question

It's not important, but I think the actual original default in sakai.properties as of 2.9 is 
sakai.X-UA-Compatible=IE=EmulateIE9 (reading old threads, it was emulateie8 because of ckeditor, which is now gone)

This was meant to protect users against IE10, which 2.9 will have issues with. 

Stephen, you've changed that property to be
sakai.X-UA-Compatible=IE=8

I think you are saying this means your sakai instance will always look like IE8 when viewed in IE8, 9 or 10, even if the campus admins have browsers set to downgrade sakai to look like IE7 within IE8? 

We are somewhat interested in a global fix like this, because we have only made this change for student computing clusters, not the IE's that might be installed for staff members by various IT departments across the campus that we are not aware of. Sam indicated that head changes wouldn't have an effect so we didn't pursue.

Unfortunately, your setting also means that ie9 users can't appreciate improvement between ie8 and 9 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff468705.aspx#_New_Features), so would "sakai.X-UA-Compatible=IE=8,9" also work? 

Or whatever that needs to be typed as to show this: <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=8; IE=9” />

On a related note, I'm not sure I know what is the difference is between IE=8 and IE=EmulateIE8. I think IE=8 forces all browsers >9 to display it as IE8, whereas EmulateIE8 tells browser to display as ie8 or it's displayed as IE5 (Quirks) mode if there were no doctype. But there is a doc type so I think the point is moot.

-Keli
P.s. when I look at source for our local nightly as well as on nightly2.sakaiproject.org:8087, I don't see <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE9"> in the head, so I'm confused as to how sakai.properties has an effect.)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Marquard" <stephen.marquard at uct.ac.za>
To: "Sam Ottenhoff" <ottenhoff at longsight.com>
Cc: "Keli Sato Amann" <kamann at stanford.edu>, "ciellie" <ciellie.jansenvanvuuren at nwu.ac.za>, sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 10:32:43 AM
Subject: RE: [Building Sakai] Sakai 2.9.1 and IE8

We investigated precisely this issue for our on-campus IE8 browsers for our 2.9.x rollout, having seen the same problem, and this change solved it. 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj676915(v=vs.85).aspx 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx 

We changed this from the previous (default?) value of sakai.X-UA-Compatible="IE=EmulateIE8". 

Obviously caveat emptor (or the open source equivalent). 

Regards 
Stephen 

From: Sam Ottenhoff [ottenhoff at longsight.com] 
Sent: 13 June 2013 07:21 PM 
To: Stephen Marquard 
Cc: Keli Sato Amann; ciellie; sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org 
Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Sakai 2.9.1 and IE8 

Setting a header won't solve the issue Keli reported. A default Microsoft group policy will force "intranet" apps to IE7 mode *despite* the HTTP header. 

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Stephen Marquard < stephen.marquard at uct.ac.za > wrote: 

We have: 

sakai.X-UA-Compatible=IE=8 

in our sakai.properties to deal with this issue. 

Regards 
Stephen 

________________________________________ 
From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [ sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org ] on behalf of Keli Sato Amann [ kamann at stanford.edu ] 
Sent: 13 June 2013 06:59 PM 
To: ciellie 
Cc: sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org 

Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Sakai 2.9.1 and IE8 

We discovered 3 weeks ago that all of our residential and library computer clusters were rendering all sites matching https://*. stanford.edu in compatibility mode and thus would make our 2.9 upgrade (live this Monday!) look horrible. Our campus admins are going to roll out a fix tonight so ie8 looks like ie8. You can check this by going to Tools>Developer tools and see if the document mode is ie7. 

Best, 
Keli 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ciellie" < ciellie.jansenvanvuuren at nwu.ac.za > 
To: sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org 
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 6:36:54 AM 
Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Sakai 2.9.1 and IE8 

Thank you very much. The problem was fixed when I turned of the 
compatibility mode in IE8 

Thanx again 

_______________________________________________ 
sakai-dev mailing list 
sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org 
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev 

TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of "unsubscribe" 
_______________________________________________ 
sakai-dev mailing list 
sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org 
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev 

TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of "unsubscribe" 

________________________________ 
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN 

This e-mail is subject to the UCT ICT policies and e-mail disclaimer published on our website at http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/emaildisclaimer/ or obtainable from +27 21 650 9111. This e-mail is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If the e-mail has reached you in error, please notify the author. If you are not the intended recipient of the e-mail you may not use, disclose, copy, redirect or print the content. If this e-mail is not related to the business of UCT it is sent by the sender in the sender's individual capacity. 

_______________________________________________ 
sakai-dev mailing list 
sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org 
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev 

TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of "unsubscribe" 