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Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu
This article is not meant to focus on XP SP2 itself, but rather to alert you to potential interactions between XP SP2's new features and World Wide Web pages. You may run into these issues whether you're a web designer or simply an XP SP2 user.
Perhaps the biggest issue you potentially face is associated with popup windows in Internet Explorer post-XP SP2.
Most users have become accustomed to seeing multiple windows pop up automatically when they visit a website. Sometimes the popup window may contain an advertisement you'd rather ignore, but in other cases it may contain crucial information pertaining to that website.
If you are running XP SP2 and are browsing a website that attempts to open a new popup window, you'll see an alert appear at the top of the main browser window. When you see that alert you can choose to allow the popup window to be displayed if you wish, either one-time only or on an ongoing basis.
If you are designing websites to be functional in a post-XP SP2 environment, you should assume that users will not allow pop up windows to be displayed, and you should design your website so that the website "fails gracefully" if and when that occurs.
While some website designers may rail against XP SP2 for "breaking popup windows," the reality is that many users may already have been running anti-popup software for some time, and XP SP2 simply makes the issue crystal clear: a popup-dependent website needs to be redesigned to not rely on popup windows.
I should also mention that because the top-of-the-page popup alert area is a new "priority attention" area for users, website designers--and advertisers--have already begun emphasizing the content that's delivered to that part of the web page. In addition, you can expect many sites to urge you to once again allow their own popup windows to be routinely displayed.
The other major change that you may run into post-XP SP2 relates to active content, programs that are downloaded as part of a web page and run on the local system.
As part of its security improvements, Windows XP SP2 has dramatically reduced the types of active content that can be delivered to, and run on, end user systems. If you attempt to download and run content that doesn't meet the new guidelines, by default Internet Explorer will display a boxed red "X" instead of the potentially problematic content.
If you have a website that relies on active content, you will want to verify that your programs and scripts continue to work as expected on post-XP SP2 systems. You may also want to plan for the time when essentially no scripting or other active content works whatsoever as users continue to harden their systems against online browser-delivered security exploits.
Another security-related change associated with XP SP2 is the introduction of a default software firewall.
While the firewall will generally be transparent and non-intrusive for user-requested content "pulled" from the web, the XP SP2 firewall will normally make an XP system running SP2 unsuitable for use as a web server (or any other sort of server delivering content outbound in response to a third party's request).
Most people do not routinely view desktop systems running Windows XP as an appropriate operating system for server-type tasks, nor should they, but we know that some people do wild things that go far beyond what Microsoft generally anticipates or supports.
While you can disable the default firewall filtering (in general or just for specific ports) to try to make XP SP2 usable for server-type tasks, you should not do that. If you need a server, run a server-class operating system on a dedicated system, do not try to "make do" with Windows XP on a user desktop (and don't forget that in most cases Darkwing or Gladstone will work fine for serving routine user web page).
The other impact of XP SP2 is an indirect one: as users improve their system security, a growing number of users may elect to install and use a browser other than Internet Explorer (IE). Because IE has traditionally had a huge market share (up to 95% of the market by some estimates), many web developers have "gotten sloppy" and have designed their websites to work only with IE. For good or ill, those days of browser monoculture may be drawing to a close. For example, here at UO this fall, we are distributing Mozilla as an alternative to IE on the Duckware CD-ROM.
Again, the key message we'd like to impart is the importance of designing conservative web pages that use fundamental HTML constructs rather than exotic features which may work only on specific browsers. You should also be sure to test your website against a wide variety of different web browsers.
You should not allow the comparatively minor issues discussed in this article to discourage you from installing XP SP2 on your system. It is important that all users of Windows XP install (or allow Windows Update to automatically install) Service Pack 2. Regardless of whether you yourself run Windows XP, if you have web pages, you do need to take a moment to review your web pages for compatibility with Windows XP SP2, repairing any that have issues.
If you're a UO faculty member, UO student, or UO staff person and have any questions or concerns relating to Windows XP SP2 and its interaction with web pages, feel free to contact me at joe@uoregon.edu or 346-1720 to talk about those issues.