Web Browsers

Everyone needs to use a web browser to view your site and they all work a bit differently. As far as you can, try to make sure your web site can be viewed correctly and operates in all the main browsers. Each of the browsers has also got a lot of versions and some of the things that work perfectly well in the current version may not work in older versions, which a lot of people are still using.

The table below is an extract of our stats reporting for May 2005 from Index Tools

There is a more detailed table at the bottom showing the browser versions that people are using. With 80% of total visitors using Microsoft IE 6.0 (whatever you may think of it), that is the main browser to design for, then adapt to fit the others.

Dreamweaver has a useful feature for checking that your code is compatible with the various browsers and versions.

The AnyBrowser site allows you to view you pages using a strict HTML specification - it will not show you how it will look in all the browsers but may point to some compatibility problems

How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine (Cross-Browser Compatibility Checking) - a good article and links to all the major browsers

The fastest growing browser on the Web with multi-tab browsing and loads of convenience and security features plus many available extensions. Our preferred browser.

Firefox Web Developer Extension

Lots of great web developer tools that you can add as an extension toolbar in Firefox - and all free! These are some of our favourites: * Edit CSS -- Alter CSS on any site live in the browser as you watch * Disable JavaScript/CSS/Java without having to wade through the Tools/Options menus * Generate customized site speed reports with one click * Display inline dimensions of all images * Display ID and Class detail (very handy for CSS debugging) * Outline images without ALT attributes -- pick up your accessibility errors at a glance * 7 different code validators, plus a facility for you to add your own custom validator (perhaps running on a local network) Chris has even designed an amazing 1-click 'topographic view', which graphically displays the 'nested-ness' of every element on a page -- the deeper the nesting, the lighter it's tone. Amazing.

Accessibility

Lots of information and tools to make web pages accessible to all at Accessify.com

Extract from our May 2005 stats showing which browser versions people are using