Firefox Rules Them All

Firefox is the best browser on Windows PC’s. I say PC’s because I’ve never used a Mac (and don’t plan on doing so in the future either) so I can’t comment on Safari. But Firefox is the best standards-based browser out there. The one flaw it has is the memory leaks, which they’ve been working on. If you’ve been using Firefox during a long session and opening a lot of tabs/windows, the memory usage starts going up and doesn’t come down unless you restart Firefox. But I have plenty of memory so it doesn’t matter.

I say it’s the best browser because not only does it have all the best features (tabbed browsing and a million extensions), but it parses CSS coding properly. I work with 3 different browsers when I’m building a site: IE, Firefox, and Opera (sometimes Safari using a neat online preview tool). Firefox is the ONLY browser where the website displays the way it’s supposed to. In Opera and IE, and ESPECIALLY IE, there are always CSS display bugs, causing me to go back and forth, fiddling with the CSS. And then when you adjust it so it looks right in IE, things may go wrong in Firefox or Opera. To Opera’s credit, I’ve only run into one bug so far, but it’s still annoying.

All these browsers need to adopt some kind of standard parsing technique because it causes developers hell when each browser interprets XHTML/CSS code in its own way. But it’s a double edged sword really, because client’s need it done and it can cause a lot of frustration for developers. Cross-browser compatibility. It’s a pain the ass when I’m developing my own sites. But it’s not when I’m working on a client’s site and getting paid for it.

Sometimes I question whether I should even be putting in the effort to design for compatibility in Opera. IE still has 80%-90% of the browser market with Firefox taking most of the rest. Even then, mostly techies use Firefox. But I remind myself that if Opera compatibility helps close a sale for the rare Opera user that visits my site, then it’s worth it.

On another note, Dreamweaver makes significant strides in facilitating CSS design in version 8 but they still need to seriously rework the way their software interprets the code in the design view. Sometimes things can look really messed up while in the browser it looks fine. I almost always work in the code view of Dreamweaver. I mainly use it as a text editor and simple FTP file manager. I like the auto-upload and folder synchronization features - it saves me from having to open up an FTP client if I just want to make small updates.