Web Browser Compatibility

Chuck Zimmerman

Since so many of you have become more web savvy than you used to be I thought I’d point out a growing problem that I’ve been seeing lately. It’s website browser compatibility. Have you ever looked at your website in a browser other than the one you use? I highly recommend it and you may be very surprised at what you find. Does your web developer do this? You should make sure.

Why? Well if you look at this graphic which shows AgWired visitors for the last month by type of browser they use you can see a top ten list. That’s right. Ten different browsers and there are actually more. So not everyone is using Internet Explorer or Firefox. And although Internet Explorer (IE) is the biggest you need to realize that there are multiple versions of IE. There’s IE6, IE7, IE8 and a test version of IE9. Google Analytics isn’t breaking them out here. Your website could look different in each of them if it isn’t properly coded. And besides the browsers you have to also consider the operating system of your computer. What version of Window are you using or Mac OS? It makes a difference.

I’ve seen this browser compatibility problem with all kinds of websites and companies lately even including my bank where I do online banking. Now, even when we upgrade to a new version of our website software we have to fix all kinds of little bugs that pop up depending on which browser you’re using. It’s a pain in the you know what! But it’s reality. BTW. We find the most problems with IE and its various versions. And if I go back just 2 years ago IE was at 70% and of course there was no Chrome.

Internet