Web developers often test their work in many different browsers. What looks well in Internet Explorer could be a jumbled mess in Firefox, Netscape 7, or Safari. A significant number of Internet users remain loyal to lesser-known Web browsers. One of the latest browsers to come on the scene is Google Chrome. It’s grown enough that it needs some consideration.
For instance, if you test for Safari, it’s time to include Chrome. The September stats are in and Chrome overtook Safari (at least in the stats I looked at). Even if the numbers are not completely accurate, one thing is for sure. Chrome is gaining momentum. W3Schools shows the following statistics for September.
- IE7 26.3%
- IE6 22.3%
- Chrome 3.1%
- Firefox 42.6%
- Mozilla 0.5%
- Safari 2.7%
- Opera 2.0%
So what does this mean to a Web developer or a business? It’s simple, we need to consider another browser when we test. Does this mean every browser will display pixel perfect? The easy answer is no, but the display shouldn’t suffer either. Coding in flexibility is a must in today’s world. Much like breaking out a site that is content managed, text areas must expand and contract and imagery should display properly.
If nothing less than pixel perfect display is demanded, Flash may be your only hope today. At least Flash Player has 99% penetration across all browsers, according to Adobe.
However the ability of search engines to “read” Flash is limited and could result in poor search rankings. So I guess we should pick this up with Flash versus Google next.
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