Firefox's Latest version
IE7
IE6
IE 8
Which browser we should use to see HTML css rendering for always and why?
Edit:
My question is not on which browsers should i test site before go live. i will try to test on all possible.
My question is which browser should i choose during layout development process and why?
because while development it's not possible to see every step in all browser it will waste time. after making a layout we can test in all but during development one browser would be better.
Uhh... every one of them?
I personally develop with Firefox 3.6 for convenience and the availability of Firebug, header sniffers and other tools. I try to test in all the browsers you mention before anything goes out for anybody to see (a client for example). But I don't think there is a real "best" choice here because in the end, you will need to test for every browser you need to support anyway.
Use the most up-to-date css compliant browser with a good debugging tool e.g. Firefox 3.6 and the Firebug plug-in.
Then check in the other browsers you want to support for your users and backwards correct any errors.
Do not attempt to make the site look EXACTLY the same in all browsers, you will be wasting your time.
As long as the effect is similar in older/other browsers (for example you could use border-radius for Firefox/WebKit browsers and this will degrade nicely for browsers that don't support border-radius) and the site is usable and fulfills it's purpose, then your ok
DONT WASTE TONS OF TIME ON IE6. Use a conditional commented stylesheet and just get it usable...
In the head of the document
<!--[if IE 6]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="IE6.css"/>
<![endif]-->
It all depends on your target user group.
If you're working for customer that uses IE6, you will have to test for it. Sad, I know.
If you're designing a site for general public, then test for current versions of major browsers. Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari and Chrome(?).
Also: develop according to standards then fix whatever does not work in one browser or another. Not that you develop for IE, then trying to fix everything that suddenly falls apart on all other browsers.
During developing NOT testing I use this combo :
firefox
firebug extension
webdeveloper extension
live http headers extension
Give it a try, you won't regret it, you can make changes to your css IN BROWSER and then change your code (No more refresh needed for that one annoying one pixel offset), check to see where is the fault interface or code logic and plenty more.(Page Speed & YSlow to analize your page speed etc.)
I whole-heartedly agree with Pekka.
I develop everything within Firefox and use the excellent addons available during development (Firebug / Web Developer Toolbar / etc).
A suggestion would be to test often in other browsers as well....I would recommend every time you go to take a little break check it out in the other browsers to see if there are any issues, and then make a note to fix them and allow your website to be rendered properly in all browsers.
You really don't want to exclude any user based on his/her browser preference, so make sure
it works across the board!
edit
Also a good point from one of the other users...IE6 is in the process of being phased out, however if you are looking to have any users in a corporate environment you don't want to exclude testing this either!
You need to test your css in all the major browsers, that includes IE (6, 7 and 8), Firefox, Chrome and even Safari and Opera.
You can probably get away with just using the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome etc. as they auto-update and so users are less likely to be using older version (though it's not unknown).
IE is a problem because so many users - particularly corporate users - are running older versions.
Choose one, it doesn't really matter which as long as it has good development tool support, to develop in and get the site looking good in that. Then test in the others. Which order you do this and how much effort you want to expend will depend totally on your target audience. From my experience Firefox with Firebug and even (dare I say it) IE8 with it's built in developer tools are good choices. The advantage here is that you'll cover the majority of users with these. However as the browser market is getting more fragmented you will need to test in others.
This is an interesting question, I'm going to assume that you have a process that means that first you develop your page and then you do cross browser testing to make sure it works everywhere - so the question then becomes which one is going to get you to the best starting point for getting to working "everywhere" (definition of which will depend somewhat on your target audience).
This used to be easy - according to my (then) staff Firefox had good standards support and the best tools - so get it right in firefox first then adapt to cope with everything else, now its a lot less clear as IE8 has a very decent set of dev tools (and is better behaved than its predecessors) and Chrome is now getting into the act - again with a good set of tools and extensions.
My gut feeling is probably Firefox, Chrome, IE8 in that order - but I'm not doing anywhere near enough CSS work to assert that that's right.
You develop in Firefox (you have firebug to adjust things), you test in safari/chrome & opera (all of them is ok with standards so you have low chances to have bugs in those) and you debug in IE. Because is impossible to have a fully functional in ALL browser from one try :D
I use my main browser (Chrome) for basic progress, and frequently check all other browsers for bugs and layout problems.
I think If we choose firefox and IE 6.0 both for website design, the site will be look almost same for all browsers, because rest of IE 6 & 7 all browsers' HTML rendering pattern is almost same. So If we make css from start considering firefox and IE 6.0, bugs would be in less numbers and In this way we can make all browser compatible website.
Please give me feedback
I do it in ie6, the most primitive browser which is still in use.
I think any thing that will work on ie6 will work on any browser.
Related
One of my development teams have written a couple CSS files that work flawlessly with IE. However, the UI is all messed up when rendered on other browsers.
Is there a tool that can take these CSS files and convert them into cross browser version? Unfortunately, these CSS files are too large and the expertise desirable to cook cross browser CSS and test it is lacking in the team at present.
The most recent versions of all prominent browsers need to be supported.
No, because that would require a tool to understand your design intent and then fix it. If it was so easy to create cross browser compatible css by just using a magic tool we would all be using it.
Usually I see this done the other way around. Get it to work in all browsers and then hack in fixes to IE. My guess is that a few simple simple things are grossly affecting the layout. I would fix it for a more standards compliant browser like Firefox and then hack in fixes to old versions of IE as necessary.
You might want to try Prefixr. It did help me with some CrossBrowser issues, but I programmed for Chrome. Don't know how great the compatibility is the other way around.
Can anyone tell me the best way to ensure asp.net sites look the same when view in IE, Chrome or Firefox?
I've just finished one which in testing seems fine in IE but not the other 2.
I have not used CSS on this site as its not that big, I just formatted the masterpage as I wanted it.
Could that be the problem?
I usually code for Firefox first. That makes things match almost 100% in Chrome, Safari and IE9 usually. Then I go through and test in IE 8 and 7. Minor adjustments are typically made within the same CSS file. For example, IE7 usually needs to have dimensions of a container explicitly set, where most modern day browsers don't require it and render things properly.
In those rare cases that you do need to style something specifically for one or more versions of IE, use conditional comments. Here are some good links on conditional comments and how to target specific browsers and versions:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537512%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html
Unfortunately you will need to use CSS to get this to look similar in all browsers. I say similar as it is unlikely you will ever get it looking exactly the same.
Basically you will need to use the conditional CSS tags http://www.javascriptkit.com/dhtmltutors/csshacks.shtml
I would recommend spliting out the style to the a CSS and getting that working in Chrome and Firefox. Then use the tutorial linked and add in IE hacks to make it look better.
There isn't an easy way of making a site look the same in all the browsers. As caveman_dick said, maybe it's even impossible. You have to use CSS and sometimes javascript...
But to help you, you can use some programs that simulate different browsers engines, so that you could see how your site behaves. Just google browser simulator. :)
After all the latest news and talk about HTML5, I would like to know whether I can use HTML5 to create a website as of now. I mean, some features are supported by few browsers, while few features are not yet supported. So is it possible to create a full-fledged website at the current state?
The question is not whether you can create a full-fledged website, but whether you need its functionality to be identical in all browsers. The answer to the former question is yes. The answer to the latter question is still no.
I built a site in 100% semantic HTML5, tested only in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. When I was done, I added these three scripts and loaded it up in IE6 and IE7 - looked pixel-perfect! ok, perfect is an exaggeration. It doesn't look exactly the same, but it looks fine e.g. no broken layout parts, everything is legible and functional.
HTML5 Shiv script - Add HTML5 element support
ExplorerCanvas - Add <canvas> support
IE PNG Fix (IE6 only) - Add transparent PNG support
YMMV but these will almost certainly get you at least 90% of the way.
As with all new technologies make sure your website degrades gracefully.
So don't use the new <canvas> tag as the main part of your website, but you can provide a little widget or something(which is not necessary or part of the main content) which uses it.
Or if you use the <video> tag make sure that you have a backup Flash way of viewing the video as well(especially since the codecs supported by <video> is completely fragmented at the moment!)
Make sure that people on older/IE browsers can still see what your site is about and ensure it looks decent to them. I have to do the same thing with the CSS3 features that I make use of in my work.
I would say check your stats first..how many users are still on internet explorer and how important are those users to you. In other words if 80% of your users use a browser that doesn't support HTML5 then I would say don't do it
You sure can. I could write all the things you can do with HTML5 now, however I'll just link to a great article posted at http://html5doctor.com.
http://html5doctor.com/how-to-use-html5-in-your-client-work-right-now/
Charlie yes it's possible, but like you said some features are supported by most modern browsers, although not all of the features are supported at the moment . Take a look here: http://html5demos.com/
While making CSS for the website it is painful when sometimes it works on some browsers and some don't.
I wonder if there any place I can find the existing problem which has been noted with experience developers. So I can have a list of noted problem while developing.
What are the tricks?
Where Can I find it ?
How to solve it if possible?
The most problematic browser is Internet Explorer (especially 6 and below, 7 is not so bad, and 8 is a huge step in the right direction).
Even if IE holds the majority of the market, develop for a standard compliant browser such as Firefox or Webkit (Chrome and Safari) using an XHTML doctype, then fix the discrepancies on IE at a later stage. That way you will achieve the maximum compatibility with little or no efforts (if it works in the Gecko or Webkit engine, you are pretty close to being guaranteed that it will work for most browsers [except IE, but in most cases you'll be very close to perfect]).
Most of the problems you'll run into with IE are well documented on the Internet and are rather easy to fix if your page is standard compliant.
If you develop for IE first (especially IE6) then try to make your page work with the rest of the browsers, that will be problematic as your changes will probably end up breaking IE rendering.
Also, an other thing that is important to note is that font availability and rendering is different from platform to platform. Verdana on Windows may not be smoothed the same than on a Mac, and the font might not even be present on *nix.
QuirksMode has a comprehensive list of features supported on a given browser:
Compatibility Master Table (quirksmode.org)
Personally, my biggest peeve with IE6 is its poor support for PNG-24's with transparency. It requires a filter to somewhat support it.
Recently, I started maintaining a web application which unfortunately works only with IE 6. Most of the issues are related to CSS.
Is there any tool which can help me standardize the CSS classes to work with both IE 6 and IE 7? I understand I have to go through standards but I need something to start with quickly.
Firebug can help me to some extend in identifying the CSS classes related to the UI elements (if the page renders on firefox). But, I was looking for something more like an advisor tool. If you have some experience to share, please feel free.
Try out SuperPreview or the whole package (Expression Web announced at Mix)..
SuperPreview is a new free standalone application from Microsoft (still in beta) which enables you to see how your websites will look across different versions of Internet Explorer making migration from IE6 to 7 and 8 much easier than before, without have to start up a Virtual Machine to run IE6, or have a separate computer dedicated to running IE6.
Check out Dean Edwards' IE7
Tredosoft's Multiple IEs is a good compare/contrast. You go ahead and upgrade to IE7, then install this (selecting just the IE6 option, unless you need all of 5.5/5.0/4.0/etc.), and you can see the pages simultaneously in both browsers. This will help you figure out what has to be conditionalized/hacked.
Also, the IE Developer Toolbar, although not as good as Firebug et. al., will at least let you see in IE what the browser thinks is happening with your styling.
Sometimes you need to introduce a little hack for IE6 and IE7 like removing double margin and I use the following pure CSS code
css-selector { code for all browsers }
*html css-selector {code for IE6 browser }
*+html css-selector {code for IE7 browser }
it is not a tool that you expecting, but may be it would helpfull