Four new versions of web browsers have been launched this week:
- IE9
- Opera 11
- Mozilla Firefox 4
- Chrome 11 (beta)
These new innovations are good news for consumers (more choice/stiff competition/innovation), but for a web app developer this means long nights and depending on your target user segment, you will have to add the browser compatibility in the product roadmap.
So in essence your web app needs to support the following versions
- IE: IE9, IE8, IE7 [and like it or not, but IE6 too!]
- Firefox: 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.0,
- Chrome: 9.0, 8.0, 7.0, 6.0, 5.0, 10.0, 11.0
- Opera: 11.0, 10
- Safari 5 anyone?
With so many browser versions, how do you plan to handle compatibility? Or do you plan to focus on popular browser versions only (marked in the list above) and leave the latest ones to first penetrate the market?
Tell us which browser will you use for development testing purposes? We’d like to keep this as an open discussion and would like the community to share their take on browser versions.
PS: Most of the developers will ignore IE6, but do take a look at the browser stats for the Indian market (latest stats below). The market share is falling, but it still is number 3. Depending on the category of your web application, you will have to decide on IE6 support.
