Picture the Web as a web and you wandering from place to place along the strands. The program that handles the moving from place to place and converts the data into a visual Web page is a browser.
There are many browsers but most people stick with whatever one was already on their PC (normally Internet Explorer for Windows users and Safari for Mac). Linux users like to experiement more so if I just say "Try a few" they will and I can stop nagging now.
Windows users have plenty of choice as well but are less likely to experiment. So here's an attempt to make you think harder about your browser and maybe try a few. These are my opinions and if you disagree you are very welcome to do so below!
- Internet Explorer 8 - a decent browser but only Microsoft think it is fast (because they are used to v7)
- Internet Explorer 7 - first tabbed IE and also fairly good at keeping to Web standards, quick to load but then ... oh dear
- Internet Explorer 6 - the cause of more depression in Web developers than late paying clients - avoid like the plague except for testing because it doesn't follow Web standards so good CSS looks bad
- Firefox - a monster - big, fairly slow but so customisable you could spend your time playing with it instead of browsing
- Google Chrome - blindingly fast (especially at JavaScript) and only slightly unreliable but does use up disk space
- Safari - it's from Apple so its cool looking and works reasonably well but can be a little fussy and bossy
- Opera - my choice on both Linux and Windows although it annoys me sometimes, very fast, fairly reliable and with the incredibly useful Dragonfly and widgets if you get bored
It is vital that your Web site works on all of these and not just your favourite. If you keep to W3C standards you ought to be OK but unfortunately (especially when you get to JavaScript) it is not always that easy. Install as many as you can for testing your pages even if you decide not to use them yourself. Pages such as BrowserShots and tools such as IETester are very useful for checking your page on browsers you don't have.
There are lots of other browsers so once you have tried these search for more.
