Many website owners are blissfully unaware of what a browser is, and why it should be highly important to them. A browser is the piece of software used to connect to the web. Internet Explorer has been the number one browser since the browser war of the late 90’s. This, coupled with the fact the Internet Explorer (IE) also comes pre-installed on every new windows machine, has had the effect of making many people believe that there are no other browsers available …. but there are …. and for the last number of years Firefox and Opera, and more recently Google Chrome, have been chipping away at Microsoft’s dominance. So what difference does this make, isn’t a browser just a browser, surely it doesnt mater which browser my customers use to view my site, won’t they see the same thing anyway ? …. Well, not necessarily. Ideally they should see the same thing but in reality every browser ( and for that matter, every computer) displays your website slightly differently, and older browsers ( or sites designed for one browser only ) can make alarming changes to what you expect your site to look like. Web developers use a technique called gracefull degradation to allow your site to display properly across new and old browsers, but as a website owner, you should check your site against newer browsers, ( new versions of older browsers and also new browsers as they get popular, like Google Chrome, which already commands 10% of the market ). You should also make sure when you hire a developer to build your site that you are getting a cross browser compatiable site. It’s not very wise to take the approach that everyone uses Internet Explorer, as you can see by looking at this.

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