Bing Webmaster Tools Incompatibility Issues with new Microsoft Edge Browser

[RosemaryB]

Our client received an email from Bing WMTs  saying

"We have identified 4 known issues with your website in Microsoft Edge – the new default browser for Windows 10 and Bing –  Of the four problems mentioned, only two seem to be relevant (maybe)

• We’ve found that this webpage may include HTML markup that treats Microsoft Edge differently from other modern browsers. The new EdgeHTML rendering engine for Microsoft Edge is document-mode agnostic and designed for fast, modern rendering. We recommend that you implement one code base for all modern browsers and include Microsoft Edge as part of your modern browser test matrix.
• **We've found that this webpage may have missing vendor-specific prefixes **or may have implemented vendor-specific prefixes when they are not required in common CSS properties. This may cause compatibility problems with how this webpage renders across different browsers.

Last month the client received 20K visitors from all IE browsers and this is significant enough to be concerned about.

**Are other folks making changes to their code to adapt to MS Edge?  **

[Mobilio]

First i'm on Mac since 2008/09 and i missed Windows7,8 and 10. But i have experience since Windows 3.0 somewhere in 91/92. So longs story short - you should do routine website testing in Edge just to see that everything is correct and works perfect. You shouldn't see any impact if you don't follow their suggestions.

Actual all web developers and designers have long and difficult partnership with IE. IE6 trying to break W3C standards and implement own version of them. This is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_box_model_bug IE7 fixes them but add new "bugs", and IE8 add new portion of them. This is described here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/css-differences-in-internet-explorer-6-7-and-8/ http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/9-most-common-ie-bugs-and-how-to-fix-them--net-7764 https://css-tricks.com/ie-css-bugs-thatll-get-you-every-time/ and in many other articles. So all devs finally was little bit pissed off and stop supporting IE at all. They just make some IE specific hacks for specific versions user just to see something almost correct.

Later Webkit and Firefox join the party in CSS and add their own versions of CSS styles. Each of them start with webkit- or moz- as prefix. Opera also joins the party with o- preffix. But they fix almost all vendor prefixes within years with CSS3 and finally all agreed to abandon them. But all "vendors" comes with autoupdated browsers so they push new versions to users. You can't imagine today working with other than current version of Firefox, Chrome or Opera. Safari is different because actual version is only on current version of OSX. And in this world only IE is outdated... Just MS refuses to push new versions to old OSes.

So today as Bob Dylan sing "Times have changed" everything is different. And Microsoft is trying to bring back support of all standards they lacking in past. But web here is different than web before and bringing support for IE is hard. That's why they sent mails about "possible problems". Honestly mine site works in IE 6,7,8,9,10 and 11 (tested, no joke!) and should works in Edge too (not tested).

So that's why they sent you mail about "possible issues". In all web companies are jokes about IE6 or IE7 support: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/but-the-client-wants-ie-6-support/ http://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-stop-wasting-time-developing-for-internet-explorer/ And if today Microsoft warn us about "standartds" we should ask them where have they are all over years NOT supporting standards?

[thephilm]

We have not made any changes to our client sites for Edge.

Since Edge tends to handle rendering better than previous versions of IE we don't do any conditional formatting for IE.

Now if you are doing something like:

Then I can see where that may try to force Edge to render in ways that the newer version has taken care of.

[RosemaryB]

Hi Peter:  Yes, we have already used that link because it was provided in Bing's message to us and that's where I pulled the two bulleted "issues" I referenced in the original email.

The question is, do we need to go to this trouble for Edge and what might it do to legacy versions of IE?  We checked other clients and all of them have alerts - or what Bing is calling "Suggestions".

I don't see everyone following MS's suggestions and if we don't what serious impact could there be?

[Mobilio]

If you need to support EDGE you need to follow this one link: https://dev.windows.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/staticscan/ There a static tester will check your HTML and CSS for specific issues against it.

There you can see "same markup", "browser detection" and "CSS prefixes" section with more information.

The real problem is outdated IE versions. You can easy support EDGE but what to do with old versions? I know sites with visitors from IE7 still. Now Microsoft tell "support us", but what to do with all their versions?