THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CSS AND HTML WEB DESIGN
350
A browser test suite
Appendix E (Browser Guide) details when various browsers were created, their approximate
share of the market, and the major problems they cause. However, it??™s important to
note that the market is in continual change??”just a quick look at Netscape??™s fortunes
should be enough to prove that. Utterly dominant during the period when the Web first
started to become mainstream, its share of the market was decimated by the then-upstart
Internet Explorer, and it??™s now all but vanished. The point, of course, is that you cannot
predict how the browser market will change, and although Internet Explorer is sitting
proud today, its share of the market has been hit hard in recent years by Firefox, and this
downward trend for Microsoft??™s browser could continue . . . or not. Also, each year sees
new releases of web browsers, with new features and updated??”but usually incomplete??”
standards support.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that you need to think hard about browsers when
you??™re creating your work. Don??™t only test sites in a single browser, and don??™t use the most
popular for your starting point if it??™s not the most standards-compliant. Instead, use a
browser with a good grasp of web standards for your first line of tests, until you??™ve got
your templates working. I personally use the Gecko engine as a starting point??”more
specifically, I favor Firefox as an initial choice of browser.
Pages:
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450