Browser Issues

Icon Browser Company
Mozilla
Microsoft
Google
Apple
Opera
WEB PAGES are electronic files that have a format governed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Anyone can create web pages with simple applications such as TextEdit, Notepad, Microsoft Word, or comprehensive development environments such as Adobe's Dreamweaver. W3C offers a fun, interactive way to learn web page authoring techniques through it's educational web, W3Schools. You'll also find a green image link to the site on the SSD banner above.

BROWSERS are free software applications designed to retrieve files located on your hard drive or on servers throughout the world, and display their contents on your computer's display according to W3C's rules of interpretation. The major browsers are summarized in the table to the right. This page summarizes the global statistical trends by browser. No software application is perfect, and browsers are no exception. Although they're more consistent than they were a few years ago, no two browsers render a given web page the same way.

DISPLAY RESOLUTION refers to the number of horizontal and vertical pixels your screen is set to.

THE CHALLENGE for web developers is to provide a consistent presentation given that users' browser and screen resolution combinations are unknown.

THE SSD should be viewed with Firefox. This browser currently does the best job of interpreting W3C's design specifications. At this time (Sep 2011), Firefox is the world's most popular browser. Safari has a nasty habit of displaying previously stored versions of web pages (caching) so you may not be viewing the most recent version of a page. Since the content of the SSD changes continuously, this can be a source of frustration. Selecting Empty Cache from Safari's File menu will force the browser to retrieve the latest version of the page. The dimensions of the content area of the SSD are 1000 pixels wide × 590 pixels high and appears centered within the browser window. Users are encouraged to set their display resolution to accommodate these dimensions. Finally, within the View Menu, set the Zoom Level to 100% (Firefox: Reset) for optimum viewing.