[Web4lib] Browsers to test

[Amy Drayer]

Dear Nancy:

It is important to learn what browsers are accessing your Web site.  A free
analytics tool that provides this information is Google Analytics, but other
sources are available.  I typically test in Firefox (XP, Mac, Linux), IE 5
(Mac), 6 (98/XP), and 7, Opera (8 or 9), Netscape (7 or 8), Mozilla, and
Safari.  Occasionally I'll get Konqueror for Linux as well.  This could be
considered overkill... but you have to remember that the older browsers will
interpret the styles differently and will give designers great headaches.
You can make safeguards such as using the @import or using conditional
statements for versions of IE, but before you go through all the tremendous
effort (although you should try your best to make it legible, not
necessarily exact, for Firefox, IE 6/7, and Safari), find out what browsers,
resolutions, and operating systems are hitting your site.  We get about 75%
using Windows IE, so we make sure that browser works exceptionally well.
Graceful degradation is okay, especially because it's sometimes hard to test
in outdated browsers.

General browser statistics can be found at:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Hope this helps, please feel free to ask me about anything I mentioned, etc.
:-)

In peace,

Amy M. Drayer
Web Interface Designer

On 5/29/07, Nancy E. Sosna Bohm <nancy at thesmudge.com> wrote:
>
> In what versions of browsers should an academic website display with all
> of
> its design features intact?
> For example, in NS4 a page might not be laid out as intended, though the
> elements are all present and functional.
> But should a page look identical in, say, Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 1.0.7 ?
>
> Thanks in advance for input.
>
> Nancy E. Sosna Bohm
> Associate Reference Librarian
> Donnelley and Lee Library
> Lake Forest College
>
>
>
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> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>



-- 
In peace,

Amy M. Drayer
Web Interface Designer
amostrom at gmail.com
http://www.puzumaki.com