By Stan Grabowski, Website Designer for Manufacturing-Works™
Part 3 of 4
If you've never tested your website in another browser than the one you always use, how do you know if everyone can view it? As I view the stats from sites I've made, I notice about 75-80% of people are using one version of Internet Explorer (IE) or another. Another 10% are using Firefox, 10% Safari and some small amounts using the rest (Opera, Netscape, etc...). Now this may vary from site to site, and it will depend on your target audience a bit, but the vast majority of people surfing the web is still using Internet Explorer.
So why do we need to worry about all those other browsers? Because your potential customers may be using them. You have no control over what browser your visitors are using, and if your site doesn't work for them, you've just lost a customer.
Another good reason to pay attention to that other 20% of browsers is that they are way ahead of Internet Explorer in adopting web standards (see my previous article). If you make a website that only works in the current versions of IE, when IE finally stops using its proprietary codes (which is slowly happening), your site will not work in any browser.
The moral of this story: build to standards, then implement fixes for browsers that don't fully use them. It will be much easier in the long run. Depending on your design, it may be easy or difficult to make it work in every browser. When I develop, I test in IE6, IE7, Firefox, Netscape and Opera. I'd need several more computers to test on any more, so I'm mostly limited to current versions.
If you are interested in seeing how well your browser adheres to standards, take the Acit2 Browser Test developed by the Web Standards Project. Try it out in all the browsers you have and you may be surprised at what you see!
Again, this is an extensive subject that cannot be completely covered here. Feel free to contact me if you are interested in learning more.