There are only three types of CSS Rendering Browser Engines. With that being the case, do you have to install various versions of IE,FF,Chrome,Opera ? Can’t you install one version of each browser. With the exception of IE, good old IE.
Thank you. That is the route I’ll take.
Mostly. Most of the time we as developers make the assumption that users of those other browsers update regularly, or have an automatic update system running on their computers.
It’s not always true, and bugs keep getting fixed and new browsers offer new features (recently there was a post on designfestival about making sure you had enough contrast for accessibility blah blah, but users of Firefox 3.5 at the time received the tiled background image behind the text! instead of the white background that was intended… making the article undreadable.
There was some difference between FF3.5 and FF4 then that caused it, but since most web sites don’t have this problem I’d point to df writing some crappy CSS somewhere. At least, it’s more likely. And if someone on board over there had had a copy of FF3.5 they would have noticed the problem before the viewers did).
I like having several versions of each browser, but most devs do fine with the latest stable versions of all non-IE browsers.
Thanks for the help. The differences between previous versions of FireFox, Safari,Chrome and Opera are minor that I can get away with installing only the latest version numbers of these browsers ?
their auto-update features have been working properly for hundreds of years
thousands!
Though actually there is still a community using K-Meleon, which has FF2’s rendering engine for some reason. I’m pretty much adding in -moz-inline-block/box just for them.
And I have a machine with about 10 versions of Opera, mostly so I can see if some “bug” I think I’m looking at is new or old.
I’d also argue Safari and Chrome need to be tested separately. They have enough differences despite the same webkit base that they need to both be tested. Example, Chrome uses a graphics library called Skia, which Safari doesn’t. I’ve run into a CSS3 bug regarding that.
Minor, but enough for me, and Siberian Huskey is a graphics guy so he’d likely care about those differences even more than I.
Um, more than three. IE (one), Firefox (two), Chrome/Safari (three), Opera (four).
Yes, with the exception of IE you’re pretty much safe only keeping the latest version of the other browsers. That isn’t because they are 100% consistent between versions, but because their auto-update features have been working properly for hundreds of years, so almost everybody is using the latest version. It’s only IE where we really see a long tail of people who don’t upgrade.