Web Browser Comparison

Recent statistics show that the Mozilla Firefox web browser has now passed 10% market share amongst users. This means that if you are only checking your site in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser then you may be missing out on a growing percentage of visitors. You need to do a web browser comparison.

Internet Explorer, Microsoft's web browser is still the most popular by far. Probably because it comes with Windows and it's there on your desktop when you first want to use the web. It is just convenient to use.

However, if you don't test your new site in each one of the following browsers you might be in for a nasty surprise when a large part of the web can't use it.


Firefox Browser

Firefox is a free, open-source web browser for Windows, Linux and Mac. It is small (1.5mb) and is relatively easy to set up offering import routines for items such as favourites etc. from your previous browser. Users are drawn to it for a variety of reasons not least of which are the security issues that have plagued Internet Explorer.

Firefox is based on the Mozilla code, and is one of the most standards-compliant browsers available. You can obtain a free download to try it out here.

Opera

Opera is, in many ways, the alternative, alternative browser, and is known as "the third browser". Opera Software ASA develops the Opera Web browser and is an industry leader in the development of Web browsers for the desktop and device markets.

Many more technical users like it because of its constant innovation when it comes to features – anything you like in another web browser was probably available in Opera first. Opera is for Windows, Mac and Linux.

You can obtain a free download of Opera here.


Safari

Safari is now the official Mac web browser, which means that it's important to test on it if you want Macintosh users to be able to see your website. Unfortunately, Safari doesn't run at all on Windows so web browser comparison becomes difficult but not impossible.

Safari uses the same engine as a browser called Konqueror, which can run on PCs on the Linux operating system. Linux is free, and you can easily download it, burn it to CD, and run it straight from the CD. Knoppix (www.knoppix.com) is a popular and easy to use kind of Linux for this purpose.

Alternatively, if you don't want to mess around with a whole other operating system, you could try a service like BrowserCam (www.browsercam.com). They will load your website into many different browsers, and then send you pictures of it to let you see if there are any problems that need to be fixed. Because of the bandwidth and the number of computers that have to be involved, though, most of these services aren't free.


Lynx

Lynx works on a lot of very esoteric operating systems, but works fine on Windows too. It's a text-only browser, and it pays no attention to layout or graphics.

Why would anyone want that, you wonder? Well, Lynx is mostly popular among blind people who use screen-readers to turn web pages into speech. How well your web page works in Lynx is often considered to be a test of how accessible it is to anyone with disabilities, as well as to anyone who turns off things like Javascript in their browser settings.

The very worst sites will come back with a message telling users to download a supported browser when they're visited in Lynx – never do this. You should be aiming to make sure that Lynx users can see a basic, text-only version of your site, with easy-to-use navigation. If your site doesn't support this, then it's probably breaking all sorts of disability discrimination laws, and you should fix it as soon as you can. Another reason to carry out web browser comparison.

You can find more information on lynx here.

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