CNN reports that downloads of the Firefox browser have passed the 50 million mark. Have you seen what your Web site looks like using browsers other than Internet Explorer?
Different combinations of browsers and operating systems can have unexpected-and sometimes drastic-effects on your content. Don't let it happen to you!
Coffee sprayed across my monitor as the alarm bells went off. We're losing customers! I'd better buy this product now before I get fired! I mean, there's bold and italic text in those sentences! That's botalic, and that must be bad.
After I cleaned off the monitor, I wandered over to Web Side Story so I could begin to calculate the billions we're losing to unhappy Firefox users. As it turns out, Firefox has about a 7% market share in the U.S. and a 22.58% share in Germany. We don't ship to Germany, so I started to calm down. Firefox usage is growing at a rate of about half a percent a month in the U.S., according to Web Side Story.
Even without those stats, I was still curious to see how our site holds up in Firefox. I'd like to think that anyone, anywhere can use our site, and I'm still running Mac OS9 at home, so I'm well aware of browser frustration.
So I went and downloaded Firefox. For free. And after a few minutes of installation, I was on our site, which looked and behaved exactly as it does in Internet Explorer. My only loss was a couple years of life from reading that botalic text.
If you run a site, isn't it better to get the browsers and test yourself, rather than buy some product to do it for you? If you're managing hundreds of sites, I can see the need to save time, but just pass it through the browsers when you've got the design finished.
If you sell products, don't try to scare people into buying them. I'm not running around here saying, "Nobody will love you if you don't send them a cake." I think most of us get enough scares reading the newspaper and trying to get back and forth to work.
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