Continuing on my browser thread from last week, another browser trend is the recent growth of browsers that need to be supported/tested on.
Since IE 4 or so, the number of browsers out there seemed to be shrinking. It was easier when you just had to make sure things looked right in IE 6, Firefox and Safari.
On one hand, I’m glad that there are folks building browsers - choice and options are good things. On the other hand, it’s a fair amount of work to test in all of these browsers and tweak accordingly.
Here are the browsers I feel I definitely have to test in:
- Firefox 2 (with Camino, Flock, etc.)
- IE 6
- IE 7
- Safari 2
The second tier of browsers includes:
- Opera
- Firefox 1.5
- Safari 1.x
Then you’ve also got:
- Mobile browsers (lots of them)
- Custom browsers (Wii, PSP, etc.)
This testing situation is one of the big reasons I want to get a Mac Pro so I can run a bunch of Parallels instances for testing.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Avi Flax adds this Comment:
You may want to consider adopting part or all of Yahoo’s Graded Browser Support standard. It takes OS into account, and breaks down browsers into A, C, and X grades. I like it.
February 26th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Justin Moore adds this Comment:
Well, if you decide to get rid of any of your current Macs, please consider letting me know first. I’m shopping around.
Thanks.
February 26th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Simon Sigurdhsson adds this Comment:
Just curious, is Opera in the second tier because it’s less popular or because it follows standards?
February 27th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Opera is in the second tier because it is less popular. Recent releases of Opera seem to be more standards compliant, which means less tweaking is needed.
February 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Possum adds this Comment:
Thanks for pointing out that the Wii (Opera) browser and PSP browsers should be tested. I’ve run into a number of sites and software using javascript to capture keypresses, such as CGI:IRC.
I know that these browsers are not used as often (arguably not as “important”), but when all three of the computers in the house are being occupied, you’ve got to use something!
March 1st, 2007 at 8:17 am