New FF 2 and IE 7 -- Some Clarification
There seems to be a lot of “talk” regarding the new browsers: Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.0. Here's some of what I've learned from sifting through the chatter over the past couple weeks...
Firefox 2.0 employs the same rendering engine as Firefox 1.5. So if your page looks great under 1.5 then it should be golden when viewed with by 2.0. Firefox 2.0 does correct some previous errors including JavaScript 1.7 support and better Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). You are perfectly OK testing pages with 1.5 or 2.0.
There are many functional upgrades to Firefox 2.0 as well.
- Smoother, faster visual refresh
- Spell check
- RSS that doesn't suck
- Easier tabbed browsing experience (IMO)
- Phishing protection
There is no need to test with both versions of FF unless you want to test for improved JavaScript support. However, you do need to test with Internet Explorer 7. And note that previous IE6 hacks may not work or be necessary under IE7.
For best coverage you should consider checking your web pages against the following browsers:
- Internet Explorer 5.5
- Internet Explorer 6.0
- Internet Explorer 7.0
- Firefox (1.5 or 2.0)
- Safari
- Opera 9.0
In addition, if you want to full support for older browsers then include IE5 (Macintrash) and Nutscrape 4 in your tests. Alternately, ensure that your pages are backward compatible. A popular HTML/CSS development technique is to first code for Firefox/Mozilla and then add specific Internet Explorer markup if necessary.