What browsers should i design for

Users must be able to access and use all the information and features they need, regardless of which browser they use, to a reasonable degree. These lists represent usage statistics from gov. There are many internal government users still using IE 7 and other legacy browsers or operating systems. If internal government workers are your key users rather than the general public, make sure you understand their browsers and operating systems.

A second way to manage older version of Internet Explorer is to use a conditional comment to point your site visitors to an IE6 safe CSS style sheet. This feature only works in Internet Explorer other browsers ignore it , but again since we are really only worried about Firefox and Internet Explorer an IE-only fix will work for us.

The code for this fix looks something like this:. When it identifies one of those browsers it loads a special IE-centric cascading stylesheet. We can either design two versions of our page, the regular W3C compliant page and an IE friendly page; or we can use the IE-specific CSS to display an otherwise hidden element that asks users to upgrade, as we did with the JavaScript solution.

Old and noncompliant browsers create challenges for web designers, but focusing on just the most popular browsers we found two ways to address the issue. Although neither of these solutions are a cure-all, they do make designing for browser compatibility more manageable. Fix No. Summing Up Old and noncompliant browsers create challenges for web designers, but focusing on just the most popular browsers we found two ways to address the issue.

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The question still remains, however, about whether this is still a need for web designers and developers to build new websites with older browsers in mind. Making concessions for older browsers was pretty much seen as a hard necessity in previous years.

Previously, it was perceived as a web development crime not to provide support for old browser versions, even going back more than five years since release. Is extensive browser-related testing still such a vital aspect of the web development delivery process?

And for the most part, even browsers that make use of the same rendering engine Chrome and Safari are both powered by WebKit, for instance should still be usability tested before launching a website. However, the story is slightly different when it comes to providing support for older web browsers. In general, it is still always best to test how a website looks and behaves in every single browser.

In an ideal world, developers would extend this testing and support to all previous versions of every browser. This would ensure that older versions of the browser display an acceptable end product, regardless of when a negligent consumer last updated their OS or internet browser. Sure, it would ensure a completely seamless experience, but for the most part, it just cannot be done.

And thanks to that, users who are running severely outdated versions of their web browser are becoming much fewer and farther between. And by this point, the rate of innovation in the web development space has reached a point whereby browsers which lack good support for modern design techniques have been selectively phased out.

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