A web browser is essentially a translator. The browser takes a look at the HTML code of the website and then translates the code into something the user can understand. The problem is while HTML has some basic standards, there is now room for interpretation, which can cause some interesting problems for programmers. Its important to test out your website on ALL major browsers before publishing it. With that said, its almost impossible to make a website look identical and function identical on each browser. This is in part because web browsers are competing for your business so they create their own extensions, tags and attributes, altering the “standard”.
Another problem with web browsers and problems with some web pages is that not all users “update” every time there is a new version of their favorite browser. This can cause website to look and function differently. Web browsers do need to be updated occasionally in part because they support new great advances in web development. And old example is the Cascading Style Sheets or CSS. Much older browsers don’t support this and that is a problem since many of us designers use CSS.
Another thing to consider is that websites do look different on a Mac over a PC and different screen sizes affect a website. All of these things should be considered when designing a website. I always recommend to anyone building a new site to avoid “state of the art” and keep things simple. This so no matter who opens your site on any machine, using any browser can enjoy exploring your website without frustration.
Also, you should understand which browsers work better on which machines. For example, Safari, I imagine is pretty useless on the PC (I don’t know, never tried it on a PC) and I do know IE is pretty useless on a Mac.
Besides understanding that your website needs to be seen on all these sites, you as an end user have to decide which browser you want to use, and there are some good choices. When looking at web browsers you want to consider speed, security, how easy is it for you to use and whether or not it is flexible and expandable?
I’m going to start by saying that whatever you like to use, use it. It’s like anything else, many roads to OZ. I’m going to discuss a few basic things about the most popular web browsers and what my personal experience has been.
Lets look at what seems to be the most popular: Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Chrome. I have used all of these, but keep in mind that since I switched to a Mac I no longer use Internet Explorer unless I have to on a PC computer.
Firefox is a pretty powerful browser and has a built in firewall. Firefox has some cool features. I liked that the Google search in the menu bar and how you can sync your bookmarks, passwords, etc., on other computers. I wasn’t too fond of the “add-ons” and most them only messed up the way my browser functioned, but others love the add-ons. Firefox is pretty fast, but your Internet connection also can affect your browsing ability. As far as security goes, I like that it can prevent login from being intercepted and you can block websites from installing cookies. I know I barely tapped the abilities of Firefox, but I have chosen to go with a different browser for now.
Moving on to Apple’s Safari. Well, I use it on my iPad and it is just fine for that, but I recently tried it on my new iMac and I found that I could not do certain things. For example, when I tried to upload books to Pubit, it got hung up…every time. What I do like about Safari is the home page set up. Kind of cool to see your browsing history that way. Safari is also very fast, again depending on your connection, but I found it to be faster than any other browser. I like that you can have the Google search in the menu bar as well. Overall, not my favorite.
Internet Explorer. Well, its useless on the Mac. They stopped developing it, but it’s a good browser for PC users. From what I can see on a PC, the latest edition (9) is very clean and simple, which is good. I like the “Discover other sites you might like” icon. That’s kind of cool. I love the one box search feature (don’t have to go to the Google search in the menu bar) but you can do that in Firefox as well. I’ve heard that crashing has been nearly eliminated (something that happened often to me back in my PC days and sometimes happened with Firefox—annoying). I do think the add-ons are a little better than in Firefox, but I really don’t have much experience anymore with Internet Explorer. IE also has pretty good security.
Finally, lets look at Google Chrome. I find Chrome to be wickedly fast, even on my slow Internet. I love the instant search feature. Makes for browsing easy for someone like me who does a lot of key word searches. It’s a very clean design and simple, which I love. Safari and Firefox seem over crowded to me. In the past, Chrome had issues with security, but it appears most of the issues have been dealt with. I like the way the tabs work more so than in Safari and Firefox. It also can sync passwords etc., from another browser. So when I switched from Safari to Chrome, Chrome asked me which browser I wanted to pull information over, so that was cool. I think Chrome is going to give all the other browsers a run for their money.
Just because I like one over the other doesn’t mean its what you should do. I will make only recommendation when it comes to picking a web browser—update it when new versions come out. Sure, sometimes their fixes create other problems, but generally speaking, these tweaks are worth updating for.
I find your observation of Internet Explorer humorous. I love it – until after the second time around – it started doing strange things. I found others who’d had the same problems. I switched to Google Chrome and haven’t looked back.
I honestly haven’t used IE regularly in two years. The majority of PC users do use IE, so as a web designer, I need to make sure my websites function on the browser. Personally, I am loving Chrome. I just made that switch from Firefox recently.
I use IE most of the time. My brother has installed Firefox for me incase I can’t get into IE, which has happened before.
From what I understand, Firefox works pretty well on PC’s.
So far today, I’ve used a couple different browsers. When my Blogger account wasn’t working like it was supposed to, a different browser responded… differently with the same website. So it’s nice to have different tools at our disposal. Thanks for the informative post, Jen!
I’m a fan of Google Chrome, although I’m thinking about switching to Firefox. Thanks for the great post, Jen!
Great post, Jen!!!
I just switched to Google Chrome recently and luuuvvv it!
Let’s just say I about tossed a perfectly great computer because I thought it was going bad when the problem was actually IE!!!
I haven’t had one single freeze-up with Google Chrome, and it was a ten to twenty times per day with IE!
Exactly the same thing happened to me DeeDee! Thought it was my computer or a major issue with it and it turned out to be IE!! Luv Chrome!
On my old laptop, I broke browsers. No, literally – I tried SO many. From IE I moved to Firefox, but only two sites would work, so I headed over to Chrome. Worked fine for a few days, then would only show me three or four sites (different ones to Firefox). After spending a short while switching between the two I got fed up and moved to Safari, which refused to work at all after about two weeks. Went from that to Opera, but that was slow on my laptop and wouldn’t play videos. So I moved onto Maxthon, which was the best for about two months, before that too died. Tried a couple of lesser known ones (Lunescape I think was one, didn’t work, gave up after about a day). Now I don’t know if this was me, or my laptop, or both, but basically, I struggled a lot.
When my laptop crashed completely they rebooted it with Windows 7 and I was able to use Chrome. Hooray! For laptops, it’s one of the best, in my experience, because the toolbar at the top is thin without compromising on buttons and things you need, meaning you have maximum ‘screen space’ (something I struggle with on laptops). Since I got my new laptop I’ve used exclusively Chrome, for this reason (and it works these days). As someone who has tried an insane number of browsers, I can vouch for it.
Personally, ‘state of the art’ websites annoy the hell out of me, because they often don’t work on my laptop, or don’t work on the computers at school (and we’re not able to download flash player updates on student accounts), and it’s just… gah. So I don’t use them. If it doesn’t load, I’ll close it, and whatever it is will just go off my radar.
FYI the latest update to IE (IE9) will break Mobipocket Creator on Windows 7. Evidently there’s a javascript error that creates a conflict. I’ve seen some workarounds online, but the best solution is to roll back to IE8.
I haven’t used IE for a long time. Don’t get me started.
I use multiple browsers all the time. I find that individual browsers are good/bad at different web tasks. Right now, I have windows open in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera. Maybe I need a twelve step program.
Great post, Jen!
I think it’s funny that I plan on using several browsers in a day. I use Chrome most often, but I also use IE, Maxthon, Sea-Monkey, and Silk.
They each seem to fail on something, and then I need to switch.
Chrome and Maxthon both have the advantage of a “stealth” or private mode, which keeps the browser from showing where you’ve been. On my Kindle Fire (which is where I use Silk, of course), I have the Silk browser password protected, since it may have things I don’t want available if someone steals my Kindle Fire. For example, I might have saved passwords for sites.
I don’t password protect Maxthon, which I have set on private mode…since it won’t retain things like that.
I generally like Maxthon (which, like Chrome, syncs my bookmarks through the cloud), but it doesn’t render one of my e-mail services at all well.
I use Sea-Monkey (which is Mozilla based) to write my Kindle store works, but it’s also a nice light browser.
I sometimes have to use IE to be compatible with things at work.
It’s a complex world.
These days, I use Chrome for the PCs (Safari on school computers.) I used to stubbornly stick by Internet Explorer, with its toolbars and such, until it started freezing on Google Docs.
So I downloaded Chrome. Although I found it a little empty at first, I settled in and never looked back.
Except on my Dad’s PC. Even then, its freezing problems will probably lead me to activating Chrome there too.
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