Mouse Will Play
Skipton Web Design & Development
Tools & Resources
A Comparison of Browsers
A browser is a program used for viewing web pages. Most PCs come with Microsoft Internet Explorer installed as the default; Macs come with Apple Safari.
Believe it or not, the browser you use (and the version of that browser) can have a big impact on your web browsing experience so it's worth investigating the alternatives.
Browsers vary in:
- Speed
- Stability (likelihood of crashing)
- Security loopholes
- Support of web standards (valid HTML)
- Support of transparency in graphics (pngs)
- Bugs that cause pages to be displayed incorrectly
- Accessibility features
Before we launch a website, we test it on all major browsers and versions of browsers to check it looks OK across the board.
The Main Browsers
Internet Explorer (IE) still has by far the biggest market share - mainly because Internet Explorer is distributed with most Windows PCs. The latest version of IE is version 8. It's free although only available for PCs. With version 8, Microsoft have worked on the speed, security and web standards issues present in previous versions of IE.
IE6 poses significant problems for web designers as it doesn't support key web standards. We often spend five days coding a site and a further two days making it work in IE6! Why do we do this? Well, we'd love to drop support for IE6 but unfortunately IE6 still accounts for about 20% of web usage. This is mainly due to IE7/8 not being available for Windows 2000. If you're using IE6 (you can check which version you have by opening IE and clicking Help > About), we'd strongly recommend upgrading to a newer browser such as Firefox or Chrome (both free). Not only will you be helping exasperated web designers, but you'll have a faster, more secure browsing experience.
Firefox is the second most popular browser after IE. It's free and available for both Macs and PCs. Firefox has always been way ahead of IE in supporting web standards. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.
The latest browser to come onto the market, Chrome provides a simple, easy-to use interface and it's fast. In Chrome the address bar and search box have been merged - type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages. The home page shows thumbnails of your top sites so you can access your favourite pages instantly from any new tab. As Chrome is relatively new, some sites haven't yet adapted to it. For example, if you try to access some online banks through Chrome, you may be told to use a more popular browser such as IE or Firefox. Chrome was initially launched for PCs but a Mac version is now available.
Despite being developed by Apple, Safari is available for PCs as well as Macs. Apple claim that Safari is the fastest web browser. This claim is based on tests that have shown the new JavaScript engine in Safari 4 executes JavaScript up to eight times faster than IE8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3.
Opera is free for both Mac and PCs. It has a very small share of the computer browsing market but a stronger share of the mobile device market.
For more details, see the Wikipedia web browser comparison.
