Cross Browsers Compatibility
Browsers - a brief description
In the early days of the internet there really weren't too many options. For the PC, there was Internet Explorer. Soon Netscape came on the scene for a small fee. However, Microsoft soon became the dominant browser as it was bundled with Windows operating system.
This became too much for the guys at Netscape and their browser which had a healthy share dropped in usage dramatically. It soon became a free product too
Currently, although Internet Explorer in its 6th incarnation is still by far and away the largest browser on the internet, the advent of Firefox from the guys at the Mozilla foundation has grown dramatically.
This is now taking some 25% of the market and even with the launch of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), does not seem like slowing down some time soon.
In addition, there is also Opera which at time of writing is in its 9th version. This is a clean, no nonsense browser, favoured by professionals.
Now, of course the Mac has its own browsers with Safari, perhaps being the best known. However, Firefox is becoming very popular here too and some folks still adhere to the Microsoft product line with the no longer supported IE5
Again, the Mozilla foundation, which was responsible for the Netscape and Firefox, have been developing a whole range of cross platform browsers - Gecko
Different operating systems have different browsers associated with them. We have already, mentioned the Mac, but Windows has several versions and, although WindowsXP is the dominant OS (See here for Operating System Statistics), with over 84% market share, but Windows 2000 is number 2 (who would have thought it?).
Older versions such as Windows 98 (no4) and 95 (no10) are still in use. To add insult to injury, Microsoft is set to launch Windows Vista, their latest OS.
The Mac OS is number three.
Although, with only a small market share, Linux is important as it sports its own browser Konqueror
Just to keep everyone on their toes, new versions of browsers are being launched regularly and in 2006, we have seen, Firefox, Opera, Netscape and Internet Explorer all foist new versions of their browsers on the surfing community.
The downside of this is that web designers need to take account of all these different options and build sites which work across all platform/browser combinations…..more
we offer our clients
- cross browser support
- dynamic sites in PHP
- database development with MySQL
- tableless design with CSS and XHTML
- improvement in link popularity
- speedy indexing by search engines
- a business-like approach
- fixed fee contract
- strong consultancy style
- code of practice