Which browsers to test

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Which browsers to test

JonnyWales

11:14 am on Apr 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

I've always been lazy and just designed for IE. Everything is kept simple and I assumed it would work fine. HOWEVER, now I've found an issue with Mozilla 1.3 and wonder how widespread this could be. What other browsers should I look at eg. Netscape, Opera ... any others, and should I expect problems if I have an issue with Mozilla?

On a slightly seperate subject my WebStats show that my top 5 user agents in descending order are as below, but how do I interpret this info?

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1

henry0

11:33 am on Apr 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

I dev and test: Moz on RH, MS IE and Netscape from one step above 4.7 to most recent one
I have recently loaded Opera for RH
well, Opera really sitcks to W3c, I found some table glitches
if your design pass Opera it will be viewable through any browswer

cheers

ShawnR

12:05 pm on Apr 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

"...if your design pass Opera it will be viewable through any browswer ..."

Not sure I agree. For example, if you use the 'overflow' CSS property, test with Opera, and then assume it will be OK in all other browsers, you'd be dissapointed when you see what Netscape does to it.

I'd go for Mozilla, IE, NS, Opera all with latest plus recent versions, then NS 4.7 (just because it seems to be dying a painful death).

finoo

1:22 pm on Apr 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

Opera show the page "perfect", even with small bugs. The page can be perfect in Opera, but it doesn't look that good in IE..

henry0

1:53 pm on Apr 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

That's new to me,
could you be more precise
thanks

mipapage

3:39 pm on Apr 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

Try making a div with a set height and scrollable. Put enough content in there so that a scroll bar appears, then put some anchors in that text. If you link to those anchors from outside of that div and click one of those links, every browser but O7 will scroll the div down to the respective anchor.

Point is that all browsers have bugs. If anything, shouldn't Mozilla be the most compliant browser? They get on their bugs quick and provide development builds.

grahamstewart

2:54 am on Apr 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

I've always been lazy and just designed for IE.

Do you validate your code?
Thats probably the first step to making sure it is cross-browser compatible.
See W3C HTML Validator [validator.w3.org]

Also using the FULL doctype helps the page render the same in all browsers. See AListApart using the DOCTYPE [alistapart.com]

ShawnR

4:39 am on Apr 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

"...That's new to me, could you be more precise ..."

Not sure which post that is directed at. If post number 3, an example is:

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body style="overflow: scroll;">
hello world<br>
</body>
</html>

Opera 6 (haven't tried Opera 7) doesn't show the scroll bars even though it has been instructed to. Netscape shows a horizontal scroll bar in the middle on the window instead of the bottom, and IE is about the only browser that does the right thing for a change. I haven't validated it, but I think that would be valid html. If you html was not valid, the situation could be even worse.

If your site uses javascript, Opera has a poor reputation when it comes to DOM compliance, so again you might have problems.

Bottom line is I agree with mipapage; all browsers have bugs. Dependng on your page, it may look better in one browser or another. Just because it looks OK in Opera, doesn't mean you can assume it looks OK in others.

Shawn

henry0

11:10 am on Apr 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

HEllo ShawnR,
sorry I could have been more precise
this is the post I ref to
however your answer was on target
<<<
Opera show the page "perfect", even with small bugs. The page can be perfect in Opera, but it doesn't look that good in IE..
>>>
we are back to my simple system
check it in IE and few NNs and it should be ok
since I also run RH I also check it from there.

just checked browsers that have requested pages during April
on one site out of 80000 requessts 63 came from web tv
we almost never think about it
I don't even know how my work looks in web tv
I would like figuring how I can survey that sector.
also I think looking at stat should be a good idea
is web TV growing?
regards
Henry

gph

2:06 pm on Apr 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

henry0 I don't know if webtv is growing but I'm pretty sure most of its use is in the U.S. By the way, MS has changed the name to "MSN TV"

MS has a free program called "MSN TV Viewer". It's supposed to show your pages as seen from MSN TV. I have it and if nothing else it's interesting.

[developer.webtv.net...]

Here is their sniffing page

[developer.webtv.net...]

henry0

3:04 pm on Apr 27, 2003 (gmt 0)

gph
thank you
very intersting link

willybfriendly

3:25 am on Apr 28, 2003 (gmt 0)

"...then NS 4.7 (just because it seems to be dying a painful death). "

Isn't that the truth. And just when I decided I was going to drop NS4.x I picked up two clients that still use the thing. Found this out the hard way - they were complaining about my designs, lol. God, I hate NS 4.x! I even offered to download a more recent browser for these folks (they're on dialup), but they declined.

There are folks out there that will not upgrade a browser until their machines go belly up. We can only hope that those machines die sooner rather than later.

WBF