Ask any web developer and thier biggest nightmare is dealing with formatting in all browsers. Possibly the most consistent way is to strictly use tables. While browsers still display this differently, it for the most part, will be very similar across all platforms. Consistency does come with a price. Its as flexible as a piece of cold steel. Want to re template your site? Be prepared to redo every line of code you’ve written so far. What a pain!
We are however on the eve of something great. A revolution. A release that will launch the web into the next phase of browsing, and it comes from none other than microsoft. Wait, what? Thats right, microsoft.
For far to long users have been brain washed into thinking IE was the only browser available, and in my opinion it was the best browser to use, free browser that is. But then things changed, opera became free, and mozilla took over. Now firefox is known by all, even if they don’t use it. Google, apple, and opera are all now competing for the best browser award and microsoft is trailing as always. So how will they revolutionize the web you ask?
Microsoft has been losing market share for too long and the big wigs dont like it. With IE8 they’ve finally gotten started on the right track and they can now pass acid2 easily. acid3 looks better than in IE7 though it still doesnt perform anywhere close to any other major browser. With IE8 performming beter it will no doubt bring some customers back. And when that happends, firefox and the others will be back with even better rendering and surfing features.
If your using minefield (like you should be) then you will notice that memory management and rendering speeds are getting better. Two problems that have plagued browsers since they were invented. As developers we are entering an age that we no longer need to design for specific browsers, and tweaking for endless hours to get it to look consistent. We instead can code a site to our best ability and then warn users who choose to use a browser that’s out of date and not up to snuff.
Will IE ever be up to snuff? With IE8 i believe the answer is yes. Sure in comparison (see chart below) it is much worse than the others (and the chart doesn’t even tackle load speeds). But it is much better than IE7 which is much better than IE6. Businesses will soon be able to go to 8 since they’ve primarily been stuck on 6, and that opens the flood gates to better browsing. Sure it will never truely compare but as long as its good enough, we only have to code one site.
Im very optimistic that microsoft will continue to improve IE at a faster pace than in the past and if thats the case (which it needs to be for IE to stay in the game) then we can all be a little bit happier.
Now is one of the best times to be coding a site. So all this stated what are we doing? Like previously said we are developing in Firefox 3. For the second build of the template we’ve checked on all the below browsers and all render good enough. Below is are the details. Please note that the template is 100% complete, id say about 98.5% though.
Opera-100% accurate
Firefox-100% accurate
Chrome-100% accurate
Safari-100% accurate
minefield- small header alignment issue (should be fixed in final)
IE7-significant menu positioning error, same header issue as minefield
IE8-same header issue as minefield, small glitch on google ad (up and down button doesnt display)
All in all IE7 looks the worse and luckily with the timing we shouldn’t need to worry about that. We may try to fix the header issue to appease IE8, minefield, and IE7. That’s all for now, if you have questions about the browsers we use just post a comment and we will try to help you get on the best browser.
Here are my unscientific findings:
minefield 3.1b2pre ->acid2 great, acid3 93/100
Opera 9.62->acid2 great, acid3 85/100
chrome 0.4.154.29 -> acid2 great, acid3 79/100
safari 3.2.1->acid2 great, acid3 75/100
firefox 3.0.4->acid2 great, acid3 71/100
IE 8.0.6001.18241 beta2->acid2 great, acid3 21/100
IE 7.5730.11-> acid2 fails miserably, acid3 12/100