Browser Compatabilty!

buddy

What browsers do people use now? Where's the best place to check your site for compatability?

Doctor HTML & WebMonkey seem to conflict on if Netscape supports Javascript - do people use Netscape as much any more - do these sources miss some of the new browsers?

Ph3n0m

I dont wate time visiting sites to check for compatability - simply download the respective browsers and test locally

I currently test on IE, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla

seamus

Originally posted by Ph3n0m
I dont wate time visiting sites to check for compatability - simply download the respective browsers and test locally

I currently test on IE, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla

Me too. I'm not overly concerned about whether the page displays identically in each browser, so long as it loses non of its functionality - How many times have you been to a site using Javascript menus when using Mozilla, only for nothing to work?

richardo

What browsers do people use now?

An extract from the logfiles of a (fairly) typical website:

1 Microsoft Internet Explorer 102,245 96.5% 1,797
2 Netscape 2,081 1.96% 62
3 Other Netscape Compatible 833 0.78% 302
4 Googlebot/2.1 522 0.49% 224
5 Opera/7.23 (Windows NT 5.0; U) [en] 86 0.08% 1
6 Others 34 0.03% 8

There are lots of other entries arount the 0.01% or less but they are all spiders and bots

Doesn't seem so long since Netscape held 75% of the market!

Draupnir

Probably has something to do with the fact that Netscape is rather cack

richardo

Be fair. In the early days, IE wasn't a patch on Netscape. Then IE passed them out and they haven't been seen since!

tricky D

I'd suggest approaching from a different direction. First, validate your code and your css. Be sure to use a few vaildators as some of them miss certain errors. Use the diagonostics available on various browsers to sort out scripting bugs, then handle visual incompatibilities. Some of these would be: differences in font size rendering, different handling of whitespace in code, differences in css support especially the box model treatment to name a few.

mneylon

Originally posted by Draupnir
Probably has something to do with the fact that Netscape is rather cack

Netscape was much more advanced than IE originally then M$ bundled IE with windoze (see antitrust for details).
NS 4.7 had a number of odd bugs in it, but NS6+ is a standards compliant browser.
NS has a number of features that IE sadly lacks...

richardo

It's a bit like the old video wars - VHS vs Betamax. Beta was better but VHS had the better sales pitch, so people bought VHS recorders and Beta died the death.

The same thing is happening with the browsers. Designers are setting up sites for IE because "no-one uses Netscape". How often have you seen that irritating message - 'This site is best viewed with IE6 in 800x600' or whatever.

Draupnir

I think it has a lot to do with how ugly netscape was imo, when I first got internet access at home all those years ago I had both browsers but netscape was too ugly for my liking. Now its a case of familiarity although I think Mozilla is far the prettier.

mneylon

Originally posted by richardo
It's a bit like the old video wars - VHS vs Betamax. Beta was better but VHS had the better sales pitch, so people bought VHS recorders and Beta died the death.

The same thing is happening with the browsers. Designers are setting up sites for IE because "no-one uses Netscape". How often have you seen that irritating message - 'This site is best viewed with IE6 in 800x600' or whatever.

The worst case is when they use a browser sniffer and code it badly..
I was denied access to a number of UK sites a couple of years ago as I was using Konqueror .. .. Even though the browser had no major issues with the site layout the stupid designer/developer had insisted on blocking users ...

tricky D

could rant for days on this but instead this article might interest some. ymmv
http://archive.webstandards.org/
\r

albino neutrino

There's a stack of browsers available for download here:

evolt broswer archive

buddy

OK, whats the top 5 then - IE, Opera, NN ?? ??

Did someone mention one called Firefox (excuse my innocence)

Edit:Ah, Firefox is made by Mozilla.

Fergal C

You can check browser compatibility here

Fergal

JustHalf

This guide shows you how to run multiple versions of IE on one PC, all the way back to IE3. You should definitely get this.

http://www.insert-title.com/web_design/?page=articles/dev/multi_IE