What browsers do you develop for?

What browsers do you develop for? Jun 03. 047

Every good web project specification document includes a list of target browsers and platforms. It’s something that I’ve been reviewing here at Mirashade, and I’m interested to know what browsers and platforms like minded developers are ‘developing’ for.

Where possible we’re refraining from developing ‘for’ Internet Explorer versions previous to 6, although we do ensure that our sites don’t become totally unusable in these.

For our most recent project we have devised the following list:

PC:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
Netscape Navigator 7.1
Mozilla 1.6
Mozilla Firefox 0.8

Mac:
Netscape Navigator 7.1
Mozilla 1.6
Mozilla Firefox 0.8
Safari 1.2

How does this compare to your browser devlopment list? Let me know…

Tagged: Technology, Web development

I think that developing for specifik browsers isn’t the right way to go. It’s a much better strategy to develop with webbstandards in mind. By doing this you also increase accessability and usability for your users. It’s becoming impossible to target browsers with all new devices that can access the web. Cell phones, TV, pocket PC and so on.

Posted by Nisse Bryngfors on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

Good point Nisse, but regardless of this, at some point you have to test against a real world browser. :)

Posted by Nathan Pitman on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

Like Nisse, I try to adhere to standards (XHTML, CSS, DOM-friendly Javascript) rather than any particular browser. This means that, when testing, there’s a much greater chance that everything will work first time across all modern browsers.

Nevertheless, although some of the newer CSS features and tricks aren’t available on IE6/Win, I’ve started to use those which will degrade gracefully. For example, the :hover attribute is ignored in IE for everything apart from links, but I’ve begun to use it in situations like container divs on navigation bars. Its absence in IE doesn’t detract from the design or content but provides a nice extra visual effect in more sophisticated browsers like Firefox or Safari.

I’d also add IE/Mac and Opera to your list of browsers.

Posted by barryf on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

Hey, that tip RE :hover on container divs is nice, I didn’t realise Firefox supported that. Neat.

Posted by Nathan Pitman on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

Pretty cool, isn’t it? CSS Zen Garden creator Dave Shea has coined a phrase for these little extras which modern browsers support: MOSe (Mozilla/Opera/Safari Enhancement).

http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/06/25/mose/

Another new favourite is :focus which is great for highlighting current-selected form elements.

Posted by barryf on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

Learned alot recently, from my own corporate site to the redesign of my blog.

Apparently, the few who do use Firefox are RELIGIOUS about things conforming correctly.

http://www.flex-mx.com/archives/000808.html

Web standards are great, but sometimes there are tricks to get EVERYTHING to work in all modern browsers. Most developers probably know these tricks by now.

Posted by David Bisset on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

David, I agree that it is often possible to use tricks to make pages render well in all modern browsers, but how do we know that in future browsers those ‘hacks’ won’t cause problems… :/

Posted by Nathan Pitman on 03/06/2004 at 09:09 AM

hello, my name is
nathan pitman.