| While writing and designing your website you need to | | | | solutions to that issue and I will go into them later. |
| keep in mind the various web browsers which one | | | | As for the other browsers, it is easy to install each |
| can find out there. Simply because you use, say, | | | | one on your computer, just do a web search to find |
| Internet Explorer version 7 that does not mean that | | | | out where to download each one and install it. You |
| your visitors will also be using IE7. Countless web | | | | may decide to skip the last few on the list as they |
| users are still using Internet Explorer 6 (still roughly | | | | account for such a tiny amount of internet users, I |
| 26% at the point in time I am writing this). | | | | will leave that decision up to you. |
| Actually, the top 10 browsers by market share | | | | Now when you update or write a new page for your |
| (according to Net Applications) are: | | | | website, or when you are starting with a new design, |
| IE6 - 26.2% | | | | check how it looks and handles on each of the |
| Firefox - 23.7% | | | | different browsers you have installed. Watch for |
| IE7 - 19.9% | | | | anything that just doesn't look right. One of the |
| IE8 - 19.9% | | | | biggest problems is with your CSS (Cascading Style |
| Safari - 4.2% | | | | Sheet) especially with IE8. |
| Chrome -3.2% | | | | Fixing all the bugs you find during your test will save |
| Opera - 2.4% | | | | you a lot of frustration in the future. Doing this test |
| Netscape -.3% | | | | before you have 100's of pages online which only |
| Mozilla -.1% | | | | work in IE7 will save you so much time in later |
| Konqueror and | | | | repairs. |
| IE5 -.04% | | | | Online solutions to testing your site on multiple |
| Okay, I know the percentages do not add up to | | | | browsers are available. Do a web search for |
| 100%, but that is due to rounding. It is still close | | | | "Browser Compatibility Tester" and see what comes |
| enough to give you an idea. | | | | up. Most are pay services, but there are some free |
| As you can see you are going to need to test your | | | | ones available, even some pay ones also offer limited |
| site on a number of different browsers to make sure | | | | access free services. One service like that which will |
| that at least the majority of visitors can see what | | | | test pages through the eyes of a Mac is (when their |
| you have to offer. What is the point of limiting your | | | | Mac server is actually working). All you do is give |
| market to just IE7 (just because that is what you | | | | them the URL to the web page you want to have |
| use). You could potentially be restricting your market | | | | tested and tell them what browser you want to test |
| to 20% of internet users, which is just not enough. | | | | in, and there you go. |
| One option is to install multiple browsers on your | | | | I hope this assists you in finding some potential minor |
| computer, this will work for some of the but not | | | | bugs in your programming before they become huge |
| others. For example, I believe that you can only install | | | | problems. It is usually a lot easier to take care of |
| Internet Explorer once on each windows machine. If | | | | things while the problems are small. Even if you are |
| you have more than one Windows machine around | | | | not in the process of updating your site, you should |
| (like say a laptop or netbook) then you can have | | | | still check your present pages just to make sure you |
| each one with a different version. | | | | are not losing any customers thanks to incompatibility |
| One other problem is testing Mac browsers on a | | | | issues. |
| Windows machine and vice versa. There are online | | | | |