Browser Compatibility!

 Compatibility as a question?

 In a wonderful world the topic of browser compatibility wouldn't exist all would adhere to the same standard. But unfortunately all web based browsers were not created equal.This epoch,IE of Microsoft is not the only browser we use and know,many friends are trying new browsers except IE,thus the compatibility is a major problem of the old fashioned pages must face,we considered this seriously very important for our visitor's experience,and all new pages got tested under different browser and major operating systems.

 Compatibility Testing Result

 As considering the importance of compatibility between cross browsers for our visitors,serious testing got processed at difference operating systems and browsers,pages got tested under Operating system including Linux,Windows,Mac OS,BSD;selected browser for testing listed as follows: Dillo,Epiphany,Firefox,Flock,Galeon,Iceape,Iceweasel, Kazehakase,Konqueror,Minefield,Navigator,Opera,SeaMonkey,Shiretoko,Avant,Chrome,K-Meleon,Minefield,MSIE,Safari,etc.

 For testing result on Operating systems,the details available and Pls check at the button left!

 For testing result by cross browsers,the details available and Pls check and click the button right!

 Summary and Suggestions

 The testing result is very satisfying,our page compatibility is good enough for most of visitors,and this shows by some example page screenshots listed on pages of Operating system compatibility testing and Cross Browser compatibility testing above.

 From the testing and following detailed guide,we make clear the browsers got good results are listed in order as follows,for reference and optional choice of our visitors:

 Chrome,Firefox,Opera,SeaMonkey,Flock,Avant,Epiphany,Galeon,Iceape,Iceweasel,K-Meleon,Minefield,Navigator,Shiretoko,MSIE,Safari.

 For other commonly used browsers,we suggest visitors use those with engines such as AppleWebKit,Gecko,Opera,MSIE 7.0+ to get the possible best display results.

 Browser and Display Suggestions

 The goal of our Web sites is to work on every existent browser.However,we chose to support the most advanced specification given by the W3C, i.e. XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1, and the code for every page is automatically fixed by HTML validation before displaying. In particular, if you have a browser with limited or absent support for CSS (like Netscape up to version 4.8), you could have major displaying problems.We do not think will plan to wirte much code for old browsers, because we think that the use of shared and accepted standards is most important in Web design, more than accesibilty for old-generation browsers,so if you have such a browser too old it's better to update it. Is it exaggerate? We think that it's worse to force Web users to a particular browser because of ActiveX controls or other proprietary technology,especially for public interest websites (e.g. institutions).

 Instead,our new version Web sites are built on open standards (XHTML, CSS, Javascript in some cases),and all the pages with XHTML and CSS validity logos should work perfectly with those (and later) versions of those browsers: Firefox (and probably all derivatives),Safari, Google Chrome,Internet Explorer 5.0+, Konqueror,Camino,Opera 7,Epiphany,Iceweasel,Iceape,IceCat,SeaMonkey,Mozilla 1.0,Firebird 0.6,Netscape 6.0,Galeon,Lynx 2.8,Links 0.9 and ELinks 0.9.Shiira,Flock,K-Meleon,Is that enough?

 The testing result accordingly,we suggest our visitors try new browsers,and we suggested the best browsers we think do good and quick for you to get the best view result and highest speed.Following table listed the browsers we suggested and tested and identified no errors,no css supportive problems identified,result shows pages have no any deformations normally.

Browser:	Version Support:	Engine:	Version Problems:	Engine:	OS:
Chrome	0.4.154.25 0.3.154.9 0.2.149.30 1.0.154.42 2.0.156.1	AppleWebKit 528.8; AppleWebKit 525.19; AppleWebKit 525.13;			Windows
Firefox	0.8 0.9 1.0.8 1.5 1.5.0.133.0.5 2.0.0.4 2.0.0.19 3.0 3.1 3.1b2 3.5	Gecko 2008043010;Gecko 20081216;Gecko 20090423;Gecko 20051111;Gecko 20060410;Gecko 20090305;Gecko 20040614;Gecko 20070515;Gecko 20040206;Gecko 2008120122;Gecko 20081201;Gecko 20090624;Gecko 20090423;Gecko 20071218;Gecko 20060228;			Linux Systems Fedora 7;Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron);Debian Testing (Lenny);Windows Systems;Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard);
Opera	0.27 7.11 7.54 8.0 8.54 9.25 9.26 9.27 9.50 9.51 9.52 9.60 9.61 9.62 9.63 9.64 10.00	Opera 7.11;Opera 7.54;Opera 8.0;Opera 8.54;Opera 9.25;Opera 9.26;Opera 9.27;Opera 9.50;Opera 9.51;Opera 9.52;Opera 9.60;Opera 9.61;Opera 9.62;Opera 9.63;Opera 9.64;Opera 10.00;Opera 0.27;			Linux systems including Debian Testing (Lenny),Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron),Windows Systems.
SeaMonkey	1.1.14 1.1.16 2.0	Gecko 20090403;Gecko 20080911002759;Gecko 20081217;Gecko 20081202;			Linux systems Fedora 7,Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron),Windows Systems.
Flock	1.0.9 1.2.6 2.0 2.5	Gecko 20080211;Gecko 20080913;Gecko 2008092122;Gecko 2009051221;			Linux Debian Testing (Lenny),Windows OS.
Avant	11.7	MSIE 7.0			Windows XP
Epiphany	2.22	Gecko 20080528			Linux Debian Testing (Lenny)
Galeon	2.0.4	Gecko 20080311			Linux Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) System
Iceape	1.1.13	Gecko 20081030			Linux Debian Testing (Lenny) System
Iceweasel	2.0.0.19 3.0.4	Gecko 2008112309;Gecko 20081202			Linux Debian Testing (Lenny) and Debian 4.0 (Etch) System
K-Meleon	1.1.4 1.5.0	Gecko 20080203;Gecko 20080716;			Windows OS
Minefield	3.2 3.6	Gecko 20081227;Gecko 20090301;Gecko 20090328;Gecko 20090526;			Linux Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron),Windows OS
Navigator	9.0.0.6	Gecko 20080219			Linux Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) System,Windows OS
Shiretoko	3.1 3.5	Gecko 2008072310;Gecko 20080829071937;Gecko 20090401;Gecko 20090603;			Linux systems including Debian Testing (Lenny) or Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron);Windows OS
MSIE	5.01 5.5 6.0 7.0 8.0	MSIE 5.01;MSIE 5.5;MSIE 6.0;MSIE 7.0;MSIE 8.0;	4.01 reports display errors from css supportive reasons	MSIE 4.01	Windows OS
Safari	4.0	AppleWebKit 528.16	3.2.1 reports explore problems for unknown reasons maybe css supportive problems or explore time expire.	AppleWebKit 525.27.1	Windows OS
Dillo			0.8.6 css supportive problems reported	Dillo 0.8.6	Linux Debian Testing (Lenny) systems

 Known problems:

 Massive use of entities would permit better visualization of non-7bit characters, like accented letters, euro symbol, typographic quotes and apostrophes etc. In some cases (especially with text browsers) you should have to manually set the encoding to ISO-8859-15 or ISO-8859-1 (UTF-8 for some pages); with old browsers, some entities would not be displayed correctly.

 Fixed positioning property, a CSS2 feature, is not supported by Internet Explorer up to version 6; PNG handling is also faulty (both things are corrected from version 7). This will lead to a slighty different displaying for some pages.

 Currently there is no mobile version of the site.This is work in progress.

 Browser Suggestions:

 What browser to use? here is our suggestions: Firefox (Iceweasel in Debian),for Linux/Windows platforms. Because it is quite light and standards-compliant, it is good to see, it features tabbed browsing, popup blocking, RSS/Atom support, good AJAX support, and because it is OPEN SOURCE, providing you the opportunity to improve it, either participating in the development or writing extensions. That's why it reached, in less than a year after the announcement of 1.0 version, 100 million downloads, and 200 million in 2 years. Particularly suggested is version 2.0 and later version, which includes some features from the most used extensions (like RSS/Atom reader built-in and session saving), possibly with Tab Mix Plus extension. And the others?

 Mozilla (or SeaMonkey, its respawn, named Iceape in Debian) is heavier and has less graphic integration with modern Windows environments than Firefox (on Linux, SeaMonkey and Firefox use a more up-to-date GTK2 library, while Mozilla uses GTK1); and if you still want its e-mail client, you can easily switch to the stand-alone clone Thunderbird. There is nothing more to say, as Mozilla uses the same rendering engine as Firefox (called Gecko).

 Netscape is not free software, but its rendering engine is based on Mozilla's, and as of version 8 the browser is built on Firefox code and can use, on Windows, the IE rendering engine, for those sites still unaware of the existence of MANY browsers. Probably, many innovations will be implemented in Firefox/Mozilla, but not immediately on Netscape. And IMHO, Netscape graphic is very heavy.

 Galeon and Epiphany require GNOME e Mozilla to work, while Firefox only needs GTK2 on Linux. Galeon interface is also more complex, while Epiphany has no RSS/Atom support and a more limited set of extensions.

 Konqueror has a compact interface, but it depends on KDE, and this could make the browser slow, especially if you don't use KDE as your desktop manager; like Safari, it has a great CSS2 support, but it doesn't support inline use of XSLT through the declaration, like Firefox does. Also, like Safari, it is not up-to-date about AJAX support, making some Web applications (like Gmail, Google Reader, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar) not work or work bad.

 Internet Explorer? The only positive note up to version 6 is that maybe it still has the best XML/XSLT support, but a very bad CSS support, which makes displaying different from other browsers (there's also a bad PNG support). AND it will never be open. AND it will never be ported to Linux. AND version 7, which makes things better for CSS, PNG, feeds and tabbed browsing, is available only for Windows XP SP2 and upcoming Vista. It's good to know, however, that the challenge launched by Firefox had made Microsoft to improve a product that still has about 90% market share.

 About Opera, the discussion is more complex. Before 7.50 version it was really upsetting: quite all IE problems (but with Linux support), very heavy interface, a nonsense THIRTY-FOUR (34) euros price, which (if not paid) led to heavier ads. With 7.50, things went better: lighter interface, more standards-compliant, a complete Internet Suite (with mail user agent et al.). Then, with 8.02, Opera went free. Now, Opera is a good browser, but if you want your browser to share the look n' feel of your GUI, or a if you want a standalone browser, then it is not for you.

 So,we suggest to install Firefox (which also has a beautiful eye-catching logo). You'll always get the best displaying of MG Web pages. At least, avoid Internet Explorer before version 7.

 What about Mac? We don't very sure know what to choose between Camino,Safari or Firefox itself; the first and the third are indeed more "free" than the second (which, moreover, is available only for Mac OS X), but Safari seems to be faster and more robust (surely Safari on MacOS X is better than IE on Windows), and it has probably the best CSS2 support available and a good built-in RSS/Atom reader (developed before those of IE7 and Fx2).Alas, like Konqueror, AJAX support is weaker than in IE/Firefox, making applications like Gmail chat not work. Suggestions to use Safari, switching to Camino/Firefox whenever necessary. Probably, a Safari with a full support of AJAX will definitely be the best choice.

 Suggested Browsers Download

 


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