jonlee.ca

From living in the second most multicultural city in the world, Toronto, there are two things that I have learned over the years. The first, is to not discriminate on the basis of anything. The second, is that the first isn’t possible. No matter what you do, you’re bound to offend someone or go against somebody’s views.

If we apply this to web development, this means we should make our websites as compatible as possible across all system specifications but most importantly, across all browsers. Yet we need to accept that there is no way we can please everybody — or it simply isn’t worth your time to go the extra distance for a tiny minority.

The Distribution
Testing your site in different browsers is crucial to maintain accessibility across the population. The “Big 3″ for PC web developers are generally cited as Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox and Opera.

At the beginning of the year, Microsoft reported that IE7 users account for 25% of the population so it has quickly gained a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. According to my own site statistics, the split is close to even between IE6 and IE7. Rendering differences between the two IE versions are quite significant; in fact, I would argue that the “Big 3″ should actually be Firefox, IE6 and IE7.

Here is the detailed breakdown of browser usage of visitors of this site (keep in mind most readers of this blog are Internet savvy and are more likely to use Firefox):

1. Firefox - 65.82%
   • 52.4% Firefox 2.x
   • 12.51% Firefox 1.5.x
   • 0.91% Firefox 1.0.x
2. Internet Explorer – 20.34%
   • 11.14% IE 7.0
   • 9.13% IE 6.0
   • 0.07% other
3. Safari - 8.30%
4. Opera - 3.29%
5. Other - 2.25%

Surprisingly, Opera only makes up 3.29% of the browser base. Sure it can pass the Acid 2 test but to the average user, what does that really matter. Luckily for us, if our site displays fine in Firefox, it usually means it displays fine in Opera as well with only a few exceptions.

The biggest concern comes with the IE and Safari users. Both of these applications are the “default” Internet browser for their respective operating systems (Windows and Mac OS). In the real world of Internet browsing, you will find these figures much higher; the average IE usage is closer to 80%.

Solution
For PC users, there is no easy way for us to install Safari to test and for Mac users, the same applies for IE (past version 5). Fortunately, there are several methods to overcome this obstacle to make sure your site is pretty across all browsers.

1. Website Generated Screenshots
   There are several services online that allow you to enter a site URL and see a screenshot of how it is rendered in different browsers. A few such sites that come to mind are iCapture/BrowsrCamp (for Safari testing), ieCapture (for IE), and BrowserShots.org. Unfortunately, many of these sites are under high demand and queue times can be outrageous. A BrowsrCamp Safari render can be seen to the right.
2. Install the required operating system
   If you’re on an Intel Mac, Bootcamp lets you install Windows. If you’re on a PC, there are ways of installing Mac OS X on your computer (not that I endorse this). And of course, you can install Linux on either systems.
3. Go to your local Apple Store or Best Buy
   Apple Stores, Best Buys, many computer stores or even the public library are almost guaranteed to have a working Internet connection so you can test your site on their computers provided your site has appropriate content and is not firewalled.
4. Edit: Check out Jake’s comment below
   He lists quite a few solutions I haven’t known about (it’s the first comment). Thanks Jake!

What about the “Other” browsers
It doesn’t seem right to ignore the small browser minorities but practically speaking, I don’t think it is worth your time and effort to improve compatibility on these browsers. This is not to say you shouldn’t test it out if you have the chance because chances are they will render properly. Also, if the fix takes only a minute, I say go for it; but unless you are designing a high traffic or very important website, the 5 or 6 visitors every month that use these other browsers are most likely used to webpages not displaying as expected. I mean, who wants to spend two or three hours updating your links and rearranging your page rendering order for that odd Lynx user who can’t afford a graphics card.

“Other” browsers that you can’t ignore for long
Contrary to what I just mentioned above, there are some rare browsers that I predict will be required to be supported in the near future. These are the mobile browsers – mainly Pocket IE and Opera Mini. PDA and Smartphone users have very small screen estate to work with and these browsers try their best to adapt full scale web pages into a 320×240 QVGA window (sometimes less). A simple resize can give you a rough idea of what they see but to get the full mobile experience, try regular Opera. It supports small-screen rendering.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.