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What Browsers Do You Test In?
Published on Sep 23, 2008
After last week’s post, The Importance of Website Testing, I was asked what browsers I actually do test in. Good question!
Current browser test suite
Each project is different and as such the test suite used may vary slightly. For example, if I were working on an intranet project where every user had only Internet Explorer 7 then that would be the focus of testing. Alternately, if a website had a significant audience using an older browser (for example, Internet Explorer 5) or a minor browser (Opera) then those browsers would be added to the test suite. Having said that here are the current browsers and operating systems I test with:
Macintosh
- Safari
- Firefox 2
- Firefox 3
Windows
- Internet Explorer 6
- Internet Explorer 7
- Firefox 2
- Firefox 3
- Google Chrome
Why don’t you test on every browser and operating system?
As website designers, it’s true, we don’t test on every possible browser and operating system combination. What we do test are the most common configurations, which accounts for anywhere from 85-95% of your users. Yes, I’m sure there is someone running Windows 95 with Netscape 3 who may visit your website some day, but building a website to accommodate that browser would be crazy. Why? Because it would severely limit the design and functionality of the website for a majority of your users. Instead we design for the majority and make sure that the website degrades gracefully (is usable) for older browsers.
An encouraging future
From experience I can tell you that browser testing is much easier than it was even a few years ago. With the adoption of standards by all the major browsers there are far less fundamental flaws that have to be worked around. Today’s bugs are much more incidental. The good news is that this trend should continue. In fact more modern browsers are beginning to support advanced standard recommendations (CSS 3) that will open the door to exciting new possibilities with your website.
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