ST, get ready for IE8

[diversteve]

Originally Posted by SlvrDragon50

I was reading that Firefox is pretty much the standard browser to work win now especially after download day.

That depends, do you want to develop for 20% of the market (Firefox) or 73% of the market (IE)...Since most PC buyers get IE pre-installed I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines

[georoc01]

Originally Posted by plot

Why would a web developer not test their sites on IE, Firefox, and Opera at the very minimum?

Also, IE8 supposedly fixes a host more security issues.

Because for those of us developing internal applications and the company has standardized on IE, there is little to be gained by testing on other browsers. Now if you are talking about public websites, that's a different story.

[plot]

Originally Posted by georoc01

Because for those of us developing internal applications and the company has standardized on IE, there is little to be gained by testing on other browsers. Now if you are talking about public websites, that's a different story.

Not to be devils advocate or a troll or anything... but that's still bad practice, and here's why:

some hotshot that knows nothing but is in charge of everything at corporate is going to eventually be told that firefox or some other browser is better and more secure than IE (I have zero issues with IE, but that's how it always goes...), so he's gonna change the standard browser to Firefox... no ifs ands or buts about it, then you'll be stuck trying to fix a few random applications that have problems.

Like I said, not trying to be a troll, but that's just how things work at companies.

[ReefHound]

Originally Posted by plot

some hotshot that knows nothing but is in charge of everything at corporate is going to eventually be told that firefox or some other browser is better and more secure than IE (I have zero issues with IE, but that's how it always goes...), so he's gonna change the standard browser to Firefox... no ifs ands or buts about it, then you'll be stuck trying to fix a few random applications that have problems.

Like I said, not trying to be a troll, but that's just how things work at companies.

Maybe that's how things work at your company but it's not a generalization that applies to every company. Nor is every company that has an intranet some corporate behemoth with layers of clueless management. And even if it does happen like you say, so what? You'll be getting paid to fix those problems. Sounds like job security to me!

Personally, I'd be more worried about having to explain to the boss why it always takes me longer to write something than he's been led to believe it takes by others because I'm spending time and resources to support a system our company doesn't even use.

I guess we should also write all of our in-house engineering applications to run under Linux as well as Windows since the same corporate zero might order a sudden and arbitrary change in operating systems?

[plot]

Originally Posted by ReefHound

Maybe that's how things work at your company but it's not a generalization that applies to every company. Nor is every company that has an intranet some corporate behemoth with layers of clueless management. And even if it does happen like you say, so what? You'll be getting paid to fix those problems. Sounds like job security to me!

Personally, I'd be more worried about having to explain to the boss why it always takes me longer to write something than he's been led to believe it takes by others because I'm spending time and resources to support a system our company doesn't even use.

I guess we should also write all of our in-house engineering applications to run under Linux as well as Windows since the same corporate zero might order a sudden and arbitrary change in operating systems?

Fair enough. You could also just make sure the site is validates The W3C QA Toolbox - Validators, checkers and other tools for Webmasters and Web Developers then theoretically you shouldn't have problems anywhere correct?

I'd assume that most companies that have significant intranets with one or more dedicated developers are somewhat large and full of clueless management.

[Vercingetorix]

DiverSteve, Thanks for the new stats. Wow...Opera used to have 2% of market; now, less than 1%. I'll have to look at Safari (at 6%), but won't waste client billing hours on it though.

[waytooslow]

we will wait till 8 becomes solid, we never concearn ourselves with beta versions. it appears that you need to add some head code to emulate IE 7 if your page has alignment issues, javascript errors etc.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

you can read more at Your Web site may not display correctly in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 .


and Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit

hope these help in some small way.

[ScubaToys Larry]

Originally Posted by diversteve

That depends, do you want to develop for 20% of the market (Firefox) or 73% of the market (IE)...Since most PC buyers get IE pre-installed I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines

Interesting... we run about 5% more firefox and less IE that that:

1. Internet Explorer
66.27%


2. Firefox
26.65%


3. Safari
5.51%


4. Opera
0.74%


5. Mozilla
0.43%

Oh well... I think our site works with all of them - but I'll keep checking...

[roofless]

Originally Posted by Lj82

No turning back to I.E after I tried Firefox.
I'm a firm Firefox supporter

I wish there were an add-on or theme that disguised Firefox to look like IE so that I could move my boss over to it. heh

Currently running FF 3.0 and the ST site looks great.

[ReefHound]

Originally Posted by plot

Fair enough. You could also just make sure the site is validates The W3C QA Toolbox - Validators, checkers and other tools for Webmasters and Web Developers then theoretically you shouldn't have problems anywhere correct?

I'd assume that most companies that have significant intranets with one or more dedicated developers are somewhat large and full of clueless management.

A site validator is an important tool but it only checks that your pages conform to standards, not whether the browser adheres to and accurately renders to those standards. Ever try coding CSS in IE6? Perfectly written and validated markup would often render horribly mangled and broken. Most developers just gave up and threw it into quirks mode. IE7 was an improvement in that regard and I hope they continue on the right path for IE8.