How you decide to work is up to you.
CSS REFERENCE
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D
E BROWSER GUIDE
This appendix provides a brief overview of the mainstream browsers in
general use at the time of writing, including a little history about them,
estimated market share, and how standards-compliant they are (along with
whether they pass the Web Standards Project Acid2 Browser Test, at
www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/). Note that new versions of browsers are
regularly released, so this section is intended only as a guide. Details are
accurate as of October 2007.
Firefox
Full name: Mozilla Firefox.
Initial year of release: 2004 (as 1.0).
OS: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (unofficial ports to various other systems exist).
Website: www.mozilla.com/firefox/.
Market share estimate: 10??“15%.
Trend: Steady growth.
Engine: Gecko.
Compliance: High. Firefox makes an excellent base for development, although as of
2.0, it fails a few advanced elements of the Acid2 Browser Test.
Comments: Initially devised as an unofficial branch of the Mozilla project, Firefox??™s
aim was to be a compact, speedy browser, devoid of the feature-creep evident in
its parent. Initially innovative, bringing tabbed browsing and incremental find (findas-
you-type) functionality to the masses, Firefox??™s market share rapidly grew as
standards-aware websites formed an aggressive switch marketing campaign,
designed to tear complacent users away from Internet Explorer. Should you work
with Firefox, I highly recommend you install Chris Pederick??™s Web Developer toolbar,
available from www.
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