The Varieties of Web Browsers
A web browser is a program on your computer which allows you to view web pages. You’re using one right now!
By most estimates, about 75% of web users see the web through Internet Explorer for Windows. This is rarely through deliberate choice, however; the browser comes installed on all Windows PCs, and most web users probably think of it not as one browser among many but rather as simply the button you have to click to get onto the internet. There are in fact many other browsers, most of which are in many ways better than Internet Explorer.
New Techniques v Old Browsers
Things move fast in the world of web design: new techniques become available to designers all the time. But for these techniques to work, browsers must be updated to accommodate them.
A browser’s useful lifetime is quite short: even a three–year–old version will be noticeably more limited and less versatile than the latest version of the same browser. Anything over five years old will not recognise some of the features commonly found in modern websites, and should be considered obsolete.
Most browsers are updated frequently to take account of the newest techniques, not to mention the latest security features. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, gets updated rarely: version 7 was released in 2006, five years after version 6. And five internet years is a long, long time! If you are using Internet Explorer, you can check the version by going to ‘Help’ at the top of your screen, then clicking ‘About Internet Explorer’.
Why Bother Changing?
Most users of old browsers are probably happy with what they have. So why bother changing to a modern browser?
A browser is the device through which you experience a web page. Think of it as a television, and think of a modern web page as a high–definition TV programme. Even though you can see the programme perfectly well with a small black–and–white portable, the advantage of changing to a large high–definition TV is obvious. There are plenty of good reasons, mainly financial, not to update your television frequently, but almost all browsers can be downloaded free of charge, so there’s little excuse for not using the latest version!
Free Downloads
Here are the main browsers:
For Windows operating systems
For Macintosh operating systems
- Camino
- Firefox
- Mozilla
- Netscape
- OmniWeb (this is the only non–free browser; it costs $15)
- Opera
- Safari
Notes
- The AOL browser is a camoflagued version of Internet Explorer for Windows.
- The last version of Internet Explorer for Macintosh has been obsolete for several years, and can no longer be downloaded. Microsoft has no plans to update it.
- If you are using Linux, you probably won’t need to be told where to look!
In common with most web professionals, our personal favourite at the moment is Firefox: it’s fast, it has plenty of features, it doesn’t crash too often, and it gets updated frequently.
Browsers take up very little space in a typical modern computer’s memory, so why not try several and see which you prefer?
I Can’t Read the Small Print
Almost all web users will have encountered a problem which modern browsers can easily remedy: text that’s too small to read comfortably.
The most common solution is to move yourself closer to the screen. Offices are full of people with slightly less than perfect eyesight, squeezed right up against their computer monitors. Needless to say, this is not recommended.
Instead, read our instructions on how to change the font size in your browser.
Limitations of Browsers
There are dozens of browsers currently in use, most of which come in several versions. Unfortunately, none of them agree on precisely how to represent every element of a web page. This is an insoluble problem for web designers; it is simply impossible to create an interesting design that works correctly in every version of every browser.
The compromise we have chosen is to create websites that:
- work correctly in all of the modern visual browsers that abide by web standards;
- work appropriately in non–visual browsers such as screen readers (see our Accessibility page for information about these);
- and display the words and images correctly in obsolete browsers, though with no guarantee that the precise layout will work. In this context, ‘obsolete’ means anything older than Internet Explorer version 6, which came out in 2001 (and wasn’t very good even then).
Websites that are guaranteed to display perfectly in certain obsolete browsers will normally cause problems for the vast majority of visitors who use modern browsers. We will not create websites in this way unless specifically requested to. Our Accessibility section discusses some of the legal and other implications of designing for obsolete browsers.