The Testing Blog

We’ve previously discussed the various web browsers that are currently popular and should be covered when you’re testing your website. Just a quick update on the latest browser releases:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 was released today
• This week, Google released Chrome 2 beta
• Last week, Mozilla released the latest beta of Firefox 3.1

Don’t forget to test your website with the latest browsers as they come out! In particular, focus your attention on IE8. According to at least early estimates from Microsoft, a large number of websites (over 2400+) have problems with the new brower because it is MORE standards compliant, while many website expect the older LESS standards compliant browser.

In a previous post, we discussed the importance of testing your website with older web browsers. MaximumPC has a very informative article on the latest browsers of today and tomorrow (for Windows primarily) which makes a good starting place if you want to be comprehensive in the compatibility testing you perform. Here’s a summary of the list, along with the January 2009 stats for each from W3Schools:

Stable/Current Releases

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 – 25.7%
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 – 18.5% (Lots of people still haven’t upgraded)
• Mozilla Firefox 3 – 39.5%
• Opera 9.6 – 2.3%
• Apple Safari 3 – 3%

Upcoming/Beta Releases

• Google Chrome 1.0 – 3.9%
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 – 0.6%
• Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 – N/A
• Opera 10 Alpha – N/A
• Apple Safari 4 Beta – N/A

And don’t forget, you can use BrowserShots to generate quick screenshots of your website for review. All of the above browsers, except for Opera 10, are among the browsers that you can get screenshots of.