Jun 22, 2009 | The problem with browsers

Opera Unite, Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, Safari 4. The recent spate of browsers that will “revolutionize the way people surf the internet” seems to be as prolific as the emergence of search engines (read: Bing, WolframAlfa, Cuil).

I didn’t even know half of these existed.

It certainly doesn’t help it with the common consumer either - a non-scientific poll of passersby showed less than 1 in 10 knew how to differentiate a browser from a search engine.

As a web developer, regardless of memory usage, speed, and whether or not it can act as a local web server, the underlying problem is compatibility. Internet Explorer and Firefox each grab a different share of the online market — the former are likely to be less tech/geek savvy than the latter, for example — and each have their ever so slight but nonetheless existing differences in rendering the same content. What with HTML5 arriving soon and brand new semantic markup on the horizon, cross-browser compatibility is likely to still be a big and unforgiving nightmare.

Consider for example that the Internet Explorer landscape now includes IE6, 7 and 8. IE6 is still widely used in applications that don’t change much (in industry and services, for example), while IE7 and IE8 are adopted as Windows sneaks by unsuspecting users with their Automatic Updates. Developing for IE6 and IE7 was hard enough, with the need for hacks and hidden stylesheets where proper markup would not do. With IE8, does it mean I need two virtual machines, if not more?

I can’t wait until the Adobe BrowserLab opens up.

Also written on this day..

• 2008: What's Happening?
• 2006: Ah…
• 2005: On baseball caps