Ok, so I'm going to be talking about 5 "main" browsers, well, 4 cause I have only used Safari once, but it is one of the "main" ones.
Lately, since I've been forced to remake a webpage (they sent me the design, I just made sure it looked like it), one of the things I needed to be aware of is that the site is visited mostly (oh, surprise) by IE users.
So, here's where it all begins...
First, there are a couple of places where I needed to make round corners, should be easy enough, right??? Just specify it and done... well, no... cause if you put 'border-radius: x;' in css stylesheet, guess what, only Opera and Chrome react to it, you need to specify another line for when you're using Safari, and another one for when you're using Firefox... don't even know how to make it work in IE.
That's two additional lines of code for it to work... and that's just to make round corners... now imagine to build a full-fledged web app from the ground up, and have to make sure it works on most browsers, that's time and work spent on something that could be better spent on designing or developing the app itself.
But here is where it gets real...
Obviously, like everything else, there needs to be competition, so there will never be only one... if we didn't have an IE, modern browsers would amaze us less than they do, if there was no Firefox, other browsers wouldn't try as hard on having great Extensions/Widgets/Add-ons, if there was no Chrome or Safari, other browsers wouldn't try as hard to make the browser as fast as humanly possible, if there was no Opera, well, there would be less innovations that are implemented in various other browsers. (I'm only saying what comes to mind, I know each browser is not tied down to a single possitive thing). But from those mentioned, there is one we can do without and be a good thing... yes, IE.
It's not that I hate it with all my guts (which I do), but as many big companies do, they want to do it their own way *cough*Sony*cough*, and that's what makes it very hard to develop for, either you develop for IE in mind, or for a good browser in mind but with tweaks every now and then so that the essence is not lost in IE...
I'm not saying it should dissappear cause it won't, just make an effort to be competitive and not rely on computers having it installed by default.
I would like a browser that has the simplicity of Chrome, the Extension gallery of Firefox, the many innovations of Opera (please, mouse-gestures by default!!!), and... well, I don't know what I want from Safari, but I'm sure there's something... and blend it all together in a single browser, haha... well, a man can dream... a man can dream
5 comments:
I agree completely, there should be strict web standards that all browsers should apply to...not all these exceptions you have to make here and there to make it work in a particular browser....I slightly disagree with the sony statement because they always try to push for the better technology, but I agree that sometimes they are stubborn (like the mds).....and I'm sorry but whats the percentage users of opera? they are definitely not a major browser....
Dude, in Europe Opera is bigger than in America, so I DO count it as a major browser, plus it's my main browser, so... And yeah, should have specified that not everything Sony does, but like MDs or Memory Sticks (slower and more expensive), and up until a few years back Atrac3 (though not always, look at Blu-ray, to name one)
I don't know much about web developing, but I do know that web developers hate IE6...but it will die soon. Are IE7 or IE8 any better? And good luck defeating microsoft...you'll just need to develop for those browsers.
yeah... me and bryant tried to use opera after saturday.. mmmm.. at first we were all like wwwooow it's fast but then we timed it and the average was pretty much the same as chrome. and we were like woooow it has alot of cool features but it was too faulty.. it would mess up bigtime while we were doing hw lol so we ended up going back to chrome... in conclusion, chrome > opera
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