What browsers do you test in?

[davidjam]

I assume this thread already exists somewhere but I am too lazy to find it.

I'm just curious what browsers/platforms people test their sites in. Presently I am building in Firefox for Mac, and test in:

» IE for Mac,
» Netscape for Mac,
» Safari for Mac,
» Firefox for Windows, and
» IE for Windows (of course).

Also I have had almost constant frustration with Opera's rendering, so much so that I decided to declare it a piece of sh*t and never look at it again (open to disagreement on this note :)). Well that's my rundown...

[pohopo]

I test on IE for windows and Firefox for windows. I try not to get too crazy with the javascript and css so I know it will work in most browsers.

[goldbug]

Originally posted by davidjam
Also I have had almost constant frustration with Opera's rendering, so much so that I decided to declare it a piece of sh*t and never look at it again
I'm almost at that point with Opera myself.
Usually I test on:
Firefox (Windows)
Firefox (OS X)
Firefox (Linux)
IE 6
IE 5.5
IE 5.01
Safari
Konqueror
Lynx
Opera (Windows)**
Opera (OS X)**

** If something is a little off, but usable, lately I just ignore it in Opera. I know, I know, I'm a bad person because of it.

[davidjam]

Originally posted by goldbug
If something is a little off, but usable, lately I just ignore it in Opera. I know, I know, I'm a bad person because of it.

No, I think you are just trying to preserve your sanity. I think it's called the art of "letting go". In reading Meyer's latest CSS book where every other feature is noted: "Not compatible with some browsers, notably IE", it gets a little frustrating, like dangling a carrot that you never get to munch on!

[Shrike]

First and foremost, ensure pages validate to a known specification. After that, ensure pages are as accessible as possible in line with a known WAI guideline. After that comes browser compatibility.

Mozilla and Firefox
IE
Opera

Stuff Mac users (Vaaaska *snicker* :D)

[Weedpacket]

I've been toying with the idea of putting the FoxyVoice on my Windows machine and listening to my pages. But Microsoft Sam is such a nasty voice that I'm not toying with it very hard.

[Shrike]

Fangs is a (fairly) good plugin for Firefox, if you want to see how a screenreader might read your pages.

[Merve]

IE and Firefox. (but I often have to use a separate stylesheet for IE...blarg!)

[vaaaska]

Originally posted by Shrike
Stuff Mac users (Vaaaska *snicker* :D)

Is it funny, really? Ok, don't answer that.

;)

[dalecosp]

Mozilla/FreeBSD
Opera/FreeBSD
MSIE 6/XP&&98

Opera does seem a little difficult to figure sometimes. Part of the problem is the fact that they try to emulate IE, methinks...

[Canacas]

I notice something i think is very wierd. You state that you test in IE for Mac.. Why?

IE for mac is a discontinued project. It currently stand at version 5.2 witch is highly "bugged" when it comes to reading things that are slighly more advanced than <br>.


No-one should realy use a pice of softwear that they know is out-dated and that it will never be updated to get on line with other products.

Stick to Safari and FireFox when it comes to MAC. ;) in 1 year IE will be long gone and forgotten on mac. :)

[Mordecai]

Originally posted by Canacas
No-one should realy use a pice of softwear that they know is out-dated and that it will never be updated to get on line with other products.

IE has been outdated for years, and not just IE/Mac. It has almost 90% of the browser market. So, that just goes to show you how much people use out-dated software.

[Weedpacket]

If I do recall my ancient history, though, IE5/Mac was better than IE5/Win when it comes to correct rendering behaviour. And IE5.2/Mac is still significantly better than IE6/Win (although that is clearly a case of damning with faint praise).

[hkucsis]

Win IE5+
Win NS6+

For other combinations, I don't care! :D

[vaaaska]

Originally posted by hkucsis
Win IE5+
Win NS6+

For other combinations, I don't care! :D

Really? Wow, you sure are doing a dis-service to your clients. You ever hear about standards?

Wow, really...kind of shocked that people still think like this...

[davidjam]

Originally posted by dalecosp

Opera does seem a little difficult to figure sometimes. Part of the problem is the fact that they try to emulate IE, methinks...

It looks to me like they put the look and behaviour of the operating system ahead of regular css styling and at times try to combine the two, which generally looks most undesireable.

Per WPs comment, here is the plug from w3c/css page re: IE:
2001-12-19 Microsoft released Internet Explorer for the Mac 5.1, with bug fixes and improved performance. Supports full CSS1 and partial CSS2. (Mac IE 5 was the first browser to reach better than 99% support for CSS1, in March 2000.) (free; Mac OS 8, 9 & X)

That's pretty old, for one thing, and secondly, without proper support for CSS2 the real power of CSS is still being thwarted. Anyone want to volunteer for a martyrdom mission against the Microsoft facilities? All we need is a 747 and maybe some radioactive waste in the cargo ;)

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by davidjam
Anyone want to volunteer for a martyrdom mission against the Microsoft facilities? All we need is a 747 and maybe some radioactive waste in the cargo ;) You mean my avatar's not enough?

Maybe if I drank $liquid? (But, hmm, that might be real dangerous.)

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by davidjam
Per WPs comment, here is the plug from w3c/css page re: IE:
...

That's pretty old, for one thing, and secondly, without proper support for CSS2 the real power of CSS is still being thwarted. Yep, and despite that, IE/Mac is still further ahead of the game than IE6/Win!

But that's not surprising. IE6 is even older than IE5.1/Mac.

[hkucsis]

Originally posted by vaaaska
Really? Wow, you sure are doing a dis-service to your clients. You ever hear about standards?

Wow, really...kind of shocked that people still think like this...

I'm a in-house developer. Everything in my company is M$ based. The "standard" here is IE. I already have been very kind to support NS6. :D

[piersk]

Originally posted by hkucsis
I'm a in-house developer. Everything in my company is M$ based. The "standard" here is IE. I already have been very kind to support NS6. :D

I think thats fair enough. If IE is the only browser being used then theres not much point in testing in anything else; unless you're bored and feel like a challenge.

Just out of question, if it's all in house, why even bother with NS6?

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by piersk
Just out of question, if it's all in house, why even bother with NS6? Because one day they'll get fed up with having Bill Gates living in their collective wallet, realise that he didn't invent the Internet (or anything, for that matter), and realise that they can go where they want everyday and not have to ask M$'s permission to do it. Meanwhile, peace will break out all over the place, world hunger will be abolished, and portable water-driven fusion power generators will appear on hardware store shelves.

[vaaaska]

Originally posted by piersk
I think thats fair enough. If IE is the only browser being used then theres not much point in testing in anything else; unless you're bored and feel like a challenge.


I disagree. The hegemony that is MS is waining. What happens when this company looks to the future and says we are going to Linux or we can't live with all of these security issues so we're going to try Firefox?

What happens when they are told that half of their intranet will fail in Firefox (or whatever) because it was all written for MS (probably more likely the case that their javascript is for MS)? What happens when a consultant points out that if they had done something simple like followed standards they wouldn't have to spend a huge amount of money to retroactively fix the problem?

I'm not, but if I was running a large company I would darn well make sure I wasn't supporting another companies business development strategy at the risk and expense of harming my own.

I don't know...it makes sense to me at least. ;)

[goldbug]

Originally posted by piersk
Just out of question, if it's all in house, why even bother with NS6?

We've got a lot of people in our office switching to Firefox, and discovering that a lot of our crusty old internal apps only work in IE. Thankfully most of them realize it's the webapps' faults, not the browser.

EDIT: i never saw the second page :D

[davidjam]

In reply to vaska, what you say kind of goes along with what shrike said, which makes more sense to me now. I think they call it forward-compatibility.

Originally posted by Shrike
First and foremost, ensure pages validate to a known specification. After that, ensure pages are as accessible as possible in line with a known WAI guideline. After that comes browser compatibility.

In a political sense it is a progressive revolution, a conversion at "the grass roots" that I believe will prevail. And in a practical sense it ensures compatability and accessability.

So, ok, I'll sign up for the future of web standards. Back to my CSS book...

[Merve]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Meanwhile, peace will break out all over the place, world hunger will be abolished, and portable water-driven fusion power generators will appear on hardware store shelves.

I thought Bill Gates was giving millions to charity...:rolleyes:


BTW, I was under the impression that IE was going to have more standards support in the next release (slated for 2006 I believe). Is this true? Nevertheless, IE will still render font sizes bigger than other browsers :bemused:...

/me goes off to experiment with em's.

[Sxooter]

Wow, I'm having flashbacks to about 2 years ago when we had a microsoft guy in trying to sell us some piece of their software that only worked with IE, and when I pointed out that our corporate customers expected w3c compatibility, and had contracts for it, and we could lose millions when the 30,000 engineers at boeing or martin couldn't access our web site on their linux boxes he thought I was joking. He didn't believe me when I told him that a company could have that many engineers, he didn't believe they could all be running linux, and on and on. His main argument was that IE had 97% or so of the market and would never lose it. Never mind that for our customers, it was more like 75% of the market, he thought we should just toss away those users to use his product.

[davidjam]

Originally posted by Merve
I thought Bill Gates was giving millions to charity...:rolleyes:

He may be but that doesn't make a wrong into a right. Even though one purchases a slave at top dollars it still doesn't justify the wrong of such a posession, even though USA spends $$ in foreign aid it doesn't justify sticking their big boots in other peoples countries, even though my mother-in-law is a millionare it doesn't justify how mean she can be to my wife. Call me a communist but people with big bucks are also people with great responsibility to those within their domains.

I'm such an opinionated SOB :rolleyes:

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Because one day they'll get fed up with having Bill Gates living in their collective wallet, realise that he didn't invent the Internet (or anything, for that matter), and realise that they can go where they want everyday and not have to ask M$'s permission to do it. Meanwhile, peace will break out all over the place, world hunger will be abolished, and portable water-driven fusion power generators will appear on hardware store shelves. WP: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a dream!"

I dunno, weed. I think probably fusion is more likely than world peace; but I'm trying to be a realist....

[Weedpacket]

Oh well, today is my "Be Nice to Microsoft Day". I thought I should have at least one. So I won't suggest that Bill Gates's giving millions to charity doesn't make up for the amount of money lost by charities through opting for Microsoft products. I won't. Instead, I'll direct you folks to Bruce Schneier's latest Cryptogram. Could this be a Good Thing from Redmond (http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0503.html#7)?

[dalecosp]

Heh, "can any good thing come out of Redmond", to misapply a Scripture text."Microsoft Research has developed something..."Somebody help me, I seemed to have dropped my jaw ....

[Sxooter]

I test in Mozilla. I'm not sure what this IE is everybody keeps talking about. There's certainly not anything named that on the distribution of linux I run. :)

[dalecosp]

Well, then, you need to switch to FreeBSD![514] Wed 16.Mar.2005 8:03:50
[kadmin@archangel][~]
cd /usr/ports && make search key="IE" | wc -l
48496:D :D

[Merve]

A correction to my earlier post: IE7 won't be released with Longhorn, I read today, so it might be released later this year or early 2006.

How did this turn into another MS-bashing thread? :confused: Maybe we could give each other advice on what browsers we should test in...

[Sxooter]

Originally posted by dalecosp
Well, then, you need to switch to FreeBSD!


But, as everyone who reads slashdot knows, BSD is dead... :)

[dalecosp]

Originally posted by Sxooter
But, as everyone who reads slashdot knows, BSD is dead... :) Well, at least you used :) instead of :p

I would have used :D --- and I suppose we really need to ask jstarkey to give us a "tongue in cheek" smilie?

As to $var is dying, I forget that occasionally, like every time I set up YABSDB. In my shop, Windows is $var. :p In 2001 I had one FreeBSD Box. Now I have quite a few more, including all the office desktops (but that's not a real large number....)

In other news, I heard through the grapevine, but haven't seen any press, that a portion of Florida's government infrastructure was moving to a desktop Linux. Anyone got a link on that?

[goldbug]

Originally posted by dalecosp
and I suppose we really need to ask jstarkey to give us a "tongue in cheek" smilie?
Not sure what jstarkey can do... but JPNYC might be able to hook that up :cool:

[piersk]

Originally posted by goldbug
Not sure what jstarkey can do... but JPNYC might be able to hook that up :cool:

i don't think they'd know who JPNYC is. He hasn't posted on the "normal" board yet

[hkucsis]

Originally posted by piersk

Just out of question, if it's all in house, why even bother with NS6?

Because I know some of my colleagues use NS6. Also even IE crashed, my users still can use NS instead of re-installing the windows.