We live on a boat.
I don't mean to insult your intelligence, I'm sure you've figured that part out by now. We don't know each other well but you've always struck me as lucid and observant. But the fact that we live on a boat is relevant to the browsers we have tested this website in this way. There is finite space aboard this boat for things that don't involve the boat's locomotion or keeping the boat from sinking. The end result of this prioritization is that we have exactly 9 less computers than I'd like to have. Or to put in another way: one.
Given the lack of a reasonable testing lab and the fact that our solitary laptop exists in an internet desert most of the time and the fact that if I screwed it up in any way, shape or form I'd have to sleep in the dinghy, we only have access to three browsers all running under WinXP.
With a few exceptions here and there when I wasn't paying attention, all the HTML in this website passes the W3C XHTML-Transitional validation so any browser that behaves correctly (you already know what I'm leading up to, don't you?) should display this site with no problems. The Javascript we use is mostly dependent on the Prototype library so any browser that is supported by Prototype should handle our Javascript code reasonably well.
Firefox
The version we are testing on is v3.0.8 and it's well behaved. Of course. Firefox is also smash packed full of web development goodies (Web Development tool bar extension is
the awesome) so we use it pretty extensively.
Google Chrome
The version we did most of the testing on is v.1.0.154.65. It's well behaved. Of course. I've really grown to love Chrome. Mostly because it gets out of the way. The viewport is larger than Firefox and has a pretty nice element inspector (although not at the level of sophistication as the Firefox Web Development toolbar extension). Chrome is my personal browser of choice.
Safari
I haven't actually tested the website under Safari but since it's based on Webkit, the same underpinnings as Chrome, I have high hopes for it. If you tried it, let me know how it went.
Opera
Does anyone use Opera?
Internet Explorer
Sigh.
Internet Explorer is like that neighbor kid that's - well, there's no polite way to say it - he's dumber than a box of hammers. Always eating bugs and walking into street signs and picking his nose in public. Oh, he's popular but he got that way from having rich parents and punching the smart kids. You watch this child grow up and you watch for signs that he's blossoming, coming into his own, growing out of his adolescence. You have high hopes, you really do. But it just never happens. Here he is ready to graduate high school and go off into the world as an adult and he's still eating boogers.
Internet Explorer, it's time you grow up. It's 2009, fer chrissakes. The internet age has been upon us for 15 years now. Don't you think it's time you straightened up a bit? Perhaps, you could try reading a book? Or, maybe, I dunno, THE CSS SPECIFICATION?
That's my long-winded way of saying IE may or may not work with this site. I don't really know because I've long since given up trying. Use it, don't use it. Just don't send me emails telling me how this site looks like poo in Internet Explorer. I will happily refer you
here or
here to download a web browser that works and has an outside shot of preventing the Bulgarian mafia from using your computer as a spambot.
