Chrome or Firefox (or browser-agnostic) for an intranet app?

Question

If you were designing a core business intranet app for a small business, and wanted it to be as responsive-feeling as possible, where the staff are indifferent to being stuck with a certain browser, would you design for Firefox, Chrome, or test more widely than you need to just to avoid lock-in? Are there other factors you'd consider before placing all your eggs in one browser basket or not?

For instance, does Chrome have any speed-related features that other browsers lack that would need Chrome to be targeted in a cross-browser-unfriendly way, and if it did, would it be worth designing around them?

Answer 1

Go browser agnostic. There's no telling when somebody will mandate a certain browser, and you'll be stuck having to redo a certain module because it used a special plug or feature only available with the browser now outdated.

Technically we're an IE shop here, but I make sure all my apps function on at least IE and Firefox, and I'm doing more testing in Chrome as well.

Answer 2

The cheapest way to go would be to tailor the intranet app to the standards of the organization. If they are paying you by the hour, really it is their decision as to what you spend your time on. If they say it is FireFox only, then that is the way it should be done. If it is a fixed bid, then you might have some leeway, but ultimately it is their decision. They may have reasons why they don't want it to work with chrome (I can't think of a reason, but that doesn't mean there aren't some.)

Answer 3

Always write properly - i.e cross-browser - since you never know when a new version of a browser might change old behaviour.

However, using Chrome's 'applicationising' of web apps is a good choice for intranets. (Especially if it helps stops users saying "my browser is broken")

Answer 4

"and wanted it to be as responsive-feeling as possible, where the staff are indifferent to being stuck with a certain browser"

Sounds like you need a smart client application.

EDIT: By smart client I mean an application that runs seperatly from a browser and uses web services to talk to the server.

Answer 5

Be browser agnostic.

My experience is that while there is a strong preference for a browser (of their like) in tech communities, the actual user population does not really bother...or to put in other way, there is no significant difference between the modern browsers that would matter for the end-user.

I think IE and Firefox (IE especially) are designed for standards conformance where as Chrome might be lenient, especially to work great with Google apps which themselves are not really w3c spec conformant.

A safe bet is to design your app per w3c standards and be assured it would work the same in most of the browsers.

Answer 6

To be politically correct, web standrards-wise, you'd have to make it presentable in the major browsers, and all that jazz about existing company config. However, what about the advantages of using Chrome with Gears?

Answer 7

Go standard.

Answer 8

Although being standards compliant is certainly have many advantages, if your application is UI heavy and you don't want to struggle with lack HTML widgets, I suggest using a Gecko based browser which you can build UI in XUL much quicker with all the familiar functionality of a desktop application than HTML from scratch. Since Gecko is open source and actively developed, you don't risk being stuck if you were using something proprietary.

Answer 9

What is the business' IT policy on browsers? It seems like this would determine what you write it for. Why write it for either, if every computer at your client's company has IE6? Lock-in is not a problem for a company as they can dictate the policy on what people use and must have on their computers.

Speedwise you're not going to find significant gains choosing one over the other unless you're doing specific tasks that play towards their strengths (look at the range in benchmarking for instance, some google tests have chrome hundreds of times faster, where as others have firefox beating chrome).

Ideally, you'd want it to be agnostic, but if you had to choose one though, I would go with Firefox, as it's a more mature browser. I'd be reluctant to target the app for a browser that is only a couple months old, especially one that just hit 1.0.

Answer 10

"If you were designing a core business intranet app for a small business, and wanted it to be as responsive-feeling as possible, where the staff are indifferent to being stuck with a certain browser."

Chrome. You can make chrome-less web app, so you can make your intranet app looks like and act like a desktop app(fast Javascript helps a lot here). You can even make an application shortcut with Chrome so there'll be no more address bar displayed, more screen real estate.

Chrome launch a tad faster than other browsers too, everytime I want to read something on Stackoverflow immediately, I use Chrome.

Answer 11

I'd go as browser-agnostic as possible. We've got a couple systems like this, where technically they only support one browser, but we make really sure they at least function (even if they're not pretty) across the IE - Gecko - WebKit universe.

(On the other hand, if I was going to be starting one of those from scratch today, optimizing for Chrome rather than IE would be really, really tempting.)