RE: Comparing browsers

 -----Original Message-----
| From: Philippe Laporte
| Subject: Comparing browsers
|
|
| Hi,
|     My interest is in overall web content support, independent of the
| technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript,...). ie, of the all the web pages out
| there, what percentage of them render and function as intended by the
| author in different browsers.
|
| I am interested in Mozilla, Opera, and KHTML/Konqueror.
|
| Do you know where I might find such data?
|
| Thanks,
| Philippe Laporte
 ---End Original Message---

Philippe,

There is a much bigger question behind your question, and this bigger one
needs to be addressed first.  Before one can ask, "of the all the web pages
out there, what percentage of them render and function as intended by the
author in different browsers?", one must ask, "are authors using internet
technologies properly?"  In many cases, a page will not render as the author
intended because the author used poor methods to achieve a particular "look"
or "function".

There's also the question, "what is the primary browser/UA this site was
designed and tested for?"  If I design a site and primarily test it in
Mozilla, the code will likely look different than if I were trying to
achieve a similar presentation for IE, Opera, or a web-enabled cellular
phone.  One often runs up against a wall at this point, because authors are
more likely to design with a certain browser's presentation in mind, rather
than coding in a standards-conforming manner.  (I am guilty of this myself.)

There are <a href="http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/">test suites</a>
available that examine how technologies are supported (according to W3C
recommendations) by a number of browsers; but aside from taking an author's
Photoshop "mock-up" and comparing it to the final page in these browsers, we
can't compare Author's Intent to Final Presentation.

(Then there's the whole "user defined style sheets" issue, but that's
probably out of the scope of your question.  I'll simply address it by
saying that even if you design a page that looks "just right" in Mozilla
1.3, a person using that browser can make it look completely different by
employing a style sheet that states, "body: background: #000; color: #fff;
font-size: 72px;".)


Travis Seitler, I.S. Technician :: Knox Co. Finance Department
travis.seitler@knoxcounty.org

Received on Tuesday, 29 July 2003 08:10:51 UTC