Comments on: Which Browsers Matter?

By: Noname

Noname — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:27:54 +0000

I read Computer Scatter’s post above and thought this person hasn’t a clue. Then I clicked on the link to their website and was validated. Seriously, your use of ‘comic sans’ was enough, but for paragraphs. Ugh.

By: Peter Dahl

Peter Dahl — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:38:26 +0000

According to these stats from W3C, however reliable they may be, Opera is actually not that far behind Safari cracking 2% this August. Most often, though, Opera will most likely not be the dealbreaker when developing websites.

By: Nancy Seeger

Nancy Seeger — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:30:57 +0000

Like everyone else, looking forward to not having to worry IE6, time eater into design work.

Just finished testing 3 sites, tested with browsershots.org but it doesn’t show live action (pull down menus etc) so I beg a few folks to take a peak to test. I test for Safari, Firefox 2 +3, IE7 and IE6. Read recently we should wait on testing for IE8 (E Meyers quote but its not recent). But the browser will only be Acid2 ready, what about Acid3?

A bit amused by one commenter’s take on Safari, I design for the music industry were PCs are harder to find these days.

By: Adrian B

Adrian B — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:41:09 +0000

The day I can drop IE6 will be a cheerful day. But for most of my clients IE6 still mean every 4th visitor, so it’s just not doable. Yet.

As most everyone else here I develop in FF (main reason is not market share but Firebug), and then check frequently in IE7. Every now and then I take a deep breath and tremble with fear when going over to IE6 to see weird bug, like UL bullets showing up and disappearing when scrolling the page (this one is a true example!).

I check in Safari mainly because it’s my default browser. 99 times out of 100 (or even more than that) it looks like FF. A good thing about Safari is that you can generally assume the latest version because Mac users are usually up to date with Safari as part of the system updates.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:40:40 +0000

We focus on IE6+7 and Firefox plus Safari. I think we would save several hours each week if someone could take out IE6 (anyone?). But…
1) It’s always going to be a shifting canvas as new browsers appear
2) At least things are getting better and modern browsers are much closer than they were a few years ago
3) Now for those email clients. Outlook 2007 anyone?

By: Mike Gale

Mike Gale — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:09:11 +0000

It starts way before testing.

1) Write code that uses the common subset. For me that tends to be XHTML 1 transitional…

2) Write the browsers into the definition of the project. I make it part of the user persona. (And trying to force one browser onto the design is generally insane.)

3) Check syntax often, check cross browser fairly often.

4) If it needs a CSS hack, don’t do it…

5) Keep bowser code simple and seriously consider using a framework to avoid those language dialect stupidities.

By: Adam Hill

Adam Hill — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:27:18 +0000

I highly, highly recommend Browser Shots: http://browsershots.org/

You can select multiple platform/browser/version combinations to test a given URL and it will give you screenshots of each one. Beats wasting time loading them all up yourself if you just need a quick check.

It is indeed incredibly irritating to have to develop for multiple browsers, but even with Flash which is supposed to look the same in every browser there are tricks to getting it to embed fullscreen in different browsers.

By: Chris Luckhardt

Chris Luckhardt — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:13:47 +0000

We build in Firefox first. Then we complete tests with Firefox, IE7, IE6 and Safari, in that order.

By: Richard Harrison

Richard Harrison — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:07:08 +0000

I develop in FF3 and test iteratively in IE 6/7.

I test in Safari/Opera (latest versions only) at the end of the project (chances are FF3+IE6+IE7 compatibility => Safari+Opera too).

By: Amie Gillingham

Amie Gillingham — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:51:21 +0000

Our last major site redesign, we tested IE6 & 7, FF2,and Flock on the PC, and FF & Safari on the mac.

By: Benny sh

Benny sh — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:06:12 +0000

Well, mostly FF 2 and IE7, but after we discovered that IE6 can kill the most well designed standard-built sites, I guess we should pay more attention to this nasty crap as well.

By: Steve Ireland

Steve Ireland — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:27:41 +0000

We’ve developed enterprise web-apps for over ten years. Previously we supported all the major versions for all the major browsers; at a significant cost. We recently decided to QA only Safari 3, Firefox 3 and IE7+.

There are different realms of users and those who are interested in utilizing web-based applications have no issue keeping their browser current.

The decision now depends on who you are working with and what your objective is. Blanket statements regarding browser version support are naive.

By: Gerrit Duits

Gerrit Duits — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 19:18:59 +0000

There are preferred browsers in different audicences. If you’re writing to a general audience: support IE6 and IE7. If writing to techies: Support Firefox 3. Creative audicence: Safari.

By: Blake

Blake — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:54:56 +0000

I usually test in IE 6 + 7 and Firefox. If it works right there, chances are it will work okay just about anywhere. Since Firefox is mostly standards compliant, a site that renders well in Firefox should work fine in most other standards compliant browsers. That leaves just IE, so if it works in IE 6+7, things are okay. IE 8 is still in beta so you can get away with things not working exactly right there. But IE 8 is supposed to be standards compliant unless you specifically call for IE 7 mode, so when that’s released we shouldn’t have to worry too much about it.

By: Mort Blort

Mort Blort — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:35:26 +0000

http://graphjam.com/2008/08/22/song-chart-memes-web-development/

By: Justin Cresswell

Justin Cresswell — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 17:49:55 +0000

Oh yeah, we do what we can to push Firefox. http://wsg.net/blog.php?cat=29