which browser to start with? IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari?

Question

We all know the difference rendering on different browsers and various support for styles and other things on different browsers.

While start developing a site, which browser would be optimal to start and then to proceed with convincing other browsers by various methods.

For e.g. Is it ok to start with IE and then do the necessary changes to display the same in FF and chrome etc? Else start with modern/webkit browsers and then degrade the code according to IE and other low versions.

Also, I would like to know which browsers we can avoid. Many sites have stopped support to IE6. So, as developers we can also start avoiding some sites? If yes, what are all? (which versions of what broswers)

Answer 1

I suggest you to start with the worst or the most popular. You are lucky: the worst and the most popular one is the same. Internet Explorer.

Answer 2

The first thing to do is ensure you are developing your HTML and CSS to be as standards compliant as possible. This will ease cross browser testing later.

I develop everything on a modern browser, typically Firefox because it has many useful tools to help me. After each stage is working fine in FF, I load up Chrome, Safari and Opera, which 9 times out of 10 render just fine.

Then it's off to IE land. I start with the latest IE build, then work my way back to 6. Then I spent the next week swearing and tweaking all of the IE6 problems until it works as well as it can.

Answer 3

I always used to start with firefox, as it was quite unforgiving to mistakes, and most things that rendered correctly on it rendered correctly on IE. The other way around was not so.

IE used to be easy to work with, because it was so forgiving. This however meant that when testing on firefox and other browsers, nothing worked and I had to rework lots of code.