The list of 7 web browsers that involve web developer’s life

If you are a web developer, you may experience the hard time testing your final project across the list of web browsers. Yes, especially for the Microsoft shit. Your website may working beautifully on your beloved Firefox and look exactly the same on Safari on your friend’s Mac book. You may not need to concern much about the version of Firefox as people trend to click update button when notified by Mozilla pop-up.

Microsoft’s responsibility become yours

However,  your bright life may become darker, your holiday plan need to be canceled when client call you and said “Oh! drop-down navigation is not working, can you fixed that please?”.  Not yet, after few minutes, the same client call you again and said “What the fu-k of your project, 20 customers canceled the orders because the check out button does not work!”. Then, you apologize and rush up to web statistic system. The graphs on the screen say  ”Yes sir, it was Internet explorer”.  Then, it will be the end of your holiday and the end of another business with this client and all of his friends.

As web developer, you cannot call back to the client and told them that it was Microsoft shit, because now it is become your shit. The above scenario should not happen or happen only once for your first project, or you will end up web development life and continue feeding pigs at the farm down the suburb where computer is not the first equipment.

The statistic of browser usage in 2009

The Browser Statistics from w3schools presents the number of internet browsers usage from 2002 to 2009. Briefly, in 2009 there are 47% of internet surfer use Firefox. Beside, 40% of user use IE6-7-8 (hm..m.. this percentage probably come from executive users who do not know much about technology issue. However, they involve directly to money in web developer pocket). By the way, the rest are Chrome, Safari and Opera.

You may believe that “Firefox is the best internet surfer that only need to be installed in your OS”. However, according to browser statistics from w3school, you may have to change your idea to “Firefox is not only best web browser because some people choose to surf website with chrome and opera, and some are using Safari as Apple fever. Most of all, a lot of people trend to use IE as it was initially integrate to Microsoft system at first purchased”.

The purpose of this article is to remind the beginner not to overlook the cross browser testing issues. However, it is not cover all detail of how each web browser act different in one particular website. The only thing you need to know is IE was suck when browsing CSS and JavaScript.

Download web browsers that will involve your life

Here is the list of  browsers to download. If the browsers in the list below are not installed in your OS and you are web developer, I suggest that you should download it now.

IETester – For one install, you get IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and IE8 to test your project. No need to visit Microsoft.
Download IETester

Multiple IEs – If you think IE5.5 is not old enough, Multiple IEs provide you a set of IE3, IE4, IE5 and IE6. If the browser crash during the test, no panic. It is the common behavior of Microsoft’s browser.
Download Multiple IEs

IE Standalone – This is an optional. If you are decided to install Multiple IEs to get an older version of internet explorer, you may upgrade your default IE to IE7 or IE8. After that, download and install standalone of the missing version. IE Standalone allow you to run another IE version separated from the default IE.

Download IE7 Standalone
Download IE8 Standalone for XP
Download IE8 Standalone for Vista
Download IE8 Standalone for Window Server 2003
Download IE8 Standalone for Window Server 2008

Firefox – Yeah, here is something more relax. Be aware when you install too much plug-in, the browser will pretty much slow down. If you get a chance, tell everybody about firefox. Then, we can change the world.
Download Firefox 3.5

Google Chrome – Google apply to KISS approach (Keep It Stupid and Simple) again. The browser is a light and quicker. However, because the faster browsing, they have to keep the high cache files which sometime caused the browser not up to date when you hit refresh button. Use it when you doing a research on internet. Introduce it to Grand mom, Grand dad and uncle Bob. They will love it!
Download Google Chrome

Safari – If you are one of Apple’s Fan, here we go!
Download Safari

Opera – Another alternative light weight browser, there are no CPU hunger by using Opera.
Download Opera

That is all of my suggestion. If you have another additional web browser that should be tested before delivery web project, please use comment below.