Insights: Browser Compatibility

These days there are many different web browsers used across the world. This is very important to keep in mind when designing your website. It is very easy to design it in the browser you use most often yourself and disregard the rest but this can be a costly mistake.

As of January 2012 here is the breakdown of browser usage across the world:

Internet Explorer - 34.27%
Chrome - 25.99%
Firefox  - 22.68%
Safari - 7.98%
Opear - 3.84%

As you can see, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (once with figures as high as 87% back in 2002) is still in 1st place but newer player Chrome now has a very significant at 25.99% for 2nd. All this means that you should always view your website in at least these top five browsers before you open it to the public. The different browsers often have slightly different ways of rendering your site and occasionally variation can have a significant effect by distorting your layout.

One way to make sure you website works correctly in the different browsers is to actually download them all and test your site in each. Here are the download links for the top five browsers:

Internet Explorer: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US 
Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome 
Safari: http://www.apple.com/safari/download 
Opera: http://www.opera.com/download

With all the websites we create for our clients we make sure that they work the same way in all of these browsers. That’s just a standard part of the service we offer. If you’re worried that your existing website isn’t compatible with all browsers feel free to give us a call and we can check it out for you.