Supported Browsers Policy
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
We all have our personal preference when it comes to which browser to surf the web with. For some, it is a passionate choice that will be evangelised and defended at every opportunity. For others, it's whatever came with the computer or operating system they bought. While, office staff often have it enforced upon them by IT policies. This diversity and choice is a good thing that should (hopefully) prevent the spread of proprietary standards instead of web standards.
When it comes to the process of designing websites the diversity is both a blessing and a curse. A website that looks beautiful in one browser will often need work in a different browser. Web standards have eased this process but there are still a few problems that lurk in the dark area of cross-browser compatibility. Designs don't need to look identical in every browser but they do need to work and look right.
As a freelance designer my time is valuable. I need to know that when I produce and test a website for one browser that I'm not going to spend substantial amounts of time retro-fitting the code for another browser. Likewise, for my day job with NLC I need to know that website visitors will be able to access the information they need.
With all this in mind I've decided to do a short investigation into which browsers I should be supporting. What follows is both a series of recommendations but also the basis of what will become a support policy for both redNests and NLC.
Pure and accurate browser use statistics are hard to come by, however, from what I've seen Internet Explorer still holds the majority share of the market. This can be as much as 78%. Although most statistics tend to split this between version 7 and version 6, with IE7 now pushing ahead in use.
As a standards based web designer this is good news. Designing websites for IE7 is substantially easier than IE6. In most cases, I have to do a reasonable amount of work to display a website in IE6 the same way as IE7 or Firefox. Recently, I've started to produce alternative stylesheets to solve the problem.
During development I tend to test websites on Firefox. Once I'm happy with the presentation I then test it on other browsers and platforms. Unlike Internet Explorer, the different versions of Firefox tend to render web pages quite similar. This holds for Safari and Opera. In my experience, designing a website for Firefox means it will work in recent versions of both Safari and Opera.
Unfortunately, between them Firefox, Safari and Opera only account for about 20% of browser use. However, as users have to choose to install these browsers they are more likely to upgrade them to the new versions as they come out. While Internet Explorer 6 users will go along quite happy in their ignorance of needing a new browser.
Before I make my recommendations I'd like to celebrate a piece of good news. From all accounts Internet Explorer 5.5 now only holds a tiny percentage of the market. Anyone who has tried to design for this browser will share my joy.
So to my recommendations... and my redNests policy. I will support the last two versions of any of the browsers listed above. Specifically:
» Internet Explorer 7
» Internet Explorer 6
» Firefox 3.x
» Firefox 2.x
» Safari 4.x
» Safari 3.x
» Opera 9.x
» Opera 8.x
As is always the case in this industry, change is always just around the corner. Internet Explorer 8 is in final beta testing and is meant to "render content in its most standards-compliant way by default." For me, this is good news. Internet Explorer 7 has made my life substantially easier when designing and developing websites. If IE8 takes this further then it suits me.
The real question with the release of IE8 is whether to continue support for IE6. For the reasons listed above, I don't believe the number of IE6 users will drop significantly with the arrival of IE8. So depending on usage statistics, I'll continue to support IE6 for the foreseeable future. I would love to stop developing for it but this isn't an option for the majority of my customers, so it isn't an option for me.
I should point out that there are a great number of browsers out there that support web standards-based design. While not specifically listed in the support agreement, there will be no extra charge for these browsers as my websites should render properly on them.
This has been a summary of browser support from a website designer's perspective. From the perspective of a website owner or manager, browser support should come from the analysis of the website's logs. If the analytics suggest that the majority of your users still use IE5.5 then you need to support it.
For NLC, recent website logs follow global usage trends. Internet Explorer is on top by a substantial margin (84%), with IE6 being the main version used (58%). As we develop the new website, we will need to make sure that it renders properly using IE6 as a priority over any other browser. Outside of this then the last two versions of the major browsers will be supported as listed above.
Perhaps one day in the near future, standards support will be common to all browsers and I'll look back on this post with the fondness of how things used to be. Back in the real world though there will probably just be other issues to deal with... Microsoft specific meta-tags for example...
We all have our personal preference when it comes to which browser to surf the web with. For some, it is a passionate choice that will be evangelised and defended at every opportunity. For others, it's whatever came with the computer or operating system they bought. While, office staff often have it enforced upon them by IT policies. This diversity and choice is a good thing that should (hopefully) prevent the spread of proprietary standards instead of web standards.
When it comes to the process of designing websites the diversity is both a blessing and a curse. A website that looks beautiful in one browser will often need work in a different browser. Web standards have eased this process but there are still a few problems that lurk in the dark area of cross-browser compatibility. Designs don't need to look identical in every browser but they do need to work and look right.
As a freelance designer my time is valuable. I need to know that when I produce and test a website for one browser that I'm not going to spend substantial amounts of time retro-fitting the code for another browser. Likewise, for my day job with NLC I need to know that website visitors will be able to access the information they need.
With all this in mind I've decided to do a short investigation into which browsers I should be supporting. What follows is both a series of recommendations but also the basis of what will become a support policy for both redNests and NLC.
Pure and accurate browser use statistics are hard to come by, however, from what I've seen Internet Explorer still holds the majority share of the market. This can be as much as 78%. Although most statistics tend to split this between version 7 and version 6, with IE7 now pushing ahead in use.
As a standards based web designer this is good news. Designing websites for IE7 is substantially easier than IE6. In most cases, I have to do a reasonable amount of work to display a website in IE6 the same way as IE7 or Firefox. Recently, I've started to produce alternative stylesheets to solve the problem.
During development I tend to test websites on Firefox. Once I'm happy with the presentation I then test it on other browsers and platforms. Unlike Internet Explorer, the different versions of Firefox tend to render web pages quite similar. This holds for Safari and Opera. In my experience, designing a website for Firefox means it will work in recent versions of both Safari and Opera.
Unfortunately, between them Firefox, Safari and Opera only account for about 20% of browser use. However, as users have to choose to install these browsers they are more likely to upgrade them to the new versions as they come out. While Internet Explorer 6 users will go along quite happy in their ignorance of needing a new browser.
Before I make my recommendations I'd like to celebrate a piece of good news. From all accounts Internet Explorer 5.5 now only holds a tiny percentage of the market. Anyone who has tried to design for this browser will share my joy.
So to my recommendations... and my redNests policy. I will support the last two versions of any of the browsers listed above. Specifically:
» Internet Explorer 7
» Internet Explorer 6
» Firefox 3.x
» Firefox 2.x
» Safari 4.x
» Safari 3.x
» Opera 9.x
» Opera 8.x
As is always the case in this industry, change is always just around the corner. Internet Explorer 8 is in final beta testing and is meant to "render content in its most standards-compliant way by default." For me, this is good news. Internet Explorer 7 has made my life substantially easier when designing and developing websites. If IE8 takes this further then it suits me.
The real question with the release of IE8 is whether to continue support for IE6. For the reasons listed above, I don't believe the number of IE6 users will drop significantly with the arrival of IE8. So depending on usage statistics, I'll continue to support IE6 for the foreseeable future. I would love to stop developing for it but this isn't an option for the majority of my customers, so it isn't an option for me.
I should point out that there are a great number of browsers out there that support web standards-based design. While not specifically listed in the support agreement, there will be no extra charge for these browsers as my websites should render properly on them.
This has been a summary of browser support from a website designer's perspective. From the perspective of a website owner or manager, browser support should come from the analysis of the website's logs. If the analytics suggest that the majority of your users still use IE5.5 then you need to support it.
For NLC, recent website logs follow global usage trends. Internet Explorer is on top by a substantial margin (84%), with IE6 being the main version used (58%). As we develop the new website, we will need to make sure that it renders properly using IE6 as a priority over any other browser. Outside of this then the last two versions of the major browsers will be supported as listed above.
Perhaps one day in the near future, standards support will be common to all browsers and I'll look back on this post with the fondness of how things used to be. Back in the real world though there will probably just be other issues to deal with... Microsoft specific meta-tags for example...
posted by dN@redNests at
13:25
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