Internet Explorer 7 and SiteMeter: Remember your Customers
Starting yesterday evening, any web sites that used third party tracking tool sitemeter were unreachable by users that are using Internet Explorer 7. IE7 is the default browser on Windows Vista, and a recommended download on Windows XP. Customers browsing to sites running sitemeter were effectively "down" as visitors using IE7 would get the error message that said "operation aborted" and a blank page.
The problem--which a known bug in Internet Explorer--was caused by an update in the javascript code that sitemeter is using. (This has been fixed today.)
I don't which is scarier...
- sitemeter released an update to their javascript code on a Friday. (Not releasing updates on weekends or holidays unless you can avoid it is probably covered on the first day of Operations 101.)
- sitemeter is not testing with Internet Explorer 7!
I know that there has been a lot of excitement for Apple's Safari (available on Mac and Windows) and Mozilla Firefox, but remember IE still has 74% market share, according to Wikipedia. I've had the same experience reviewing logs of my sites.
