I have a site, not very important, but I recently found out it doesn't display perfectly in opera. Now, my question is how important is this? I'm working on a new project right now so don't have too much time to spair, and I'm wondering if I should go back and fix this before I continue. Your thoughts?
depends on your target audience. If your site is about tech you can expect a lot of users to use mozilla/opera. On the other hand if it's a myspace resource site you don't have to worry about it since most myspace users use IE/Firefox. Try to validate your css and html, it it doesn't display well on all browser it might be a sign that the bots will have a hard time crawling it.
I would say that it doesn't have to be perfect, just aslong as it doesn't look totally screwed then you're OK. Alot of my sites have 'differences' between browsers but unless you're actually comparing, you'd never know. Also obviously if your stats don't show alot of Opera users and you don't rate the site as being very important, put it off until you've finished your current project. If you develop sites to be standards compliant, and they work in IE, FF then I find they mostly work on everything.. including FF 1.0, IE 5.2 etc on Linux, Mac or Windows (I have browsercam). Hope that helps. Matt.
As has been mentioned it depends on your target audience and I would agree that if you validate you have a better chance of having your site work in all browsers. The figures I have from my new site (http://www.golfinnyc.com/) which I am redeveloping are interesting in that I thought people were moving away from IE on to other browsers Opera being one of them, but from what i can see Opera browser is something I don't really have to worry about. After only 2 weeks of the site being live (after redesign) the figs are as follows: Total page views - 2,446 - 100% Internet Explorer - 1,988 - 81.28% Firefox - 331 - 13.53% Safari - 99 - 4.05% Netscape - 22 - 0.90% Mozilla - 3 - 0.12% Camino - 1 - 0.04% Opera - 1 - 0.04% SonyEricssonW600i - 1 - 0.04% This is only a 2 week snap shot but from the figures I had prior to the redsign, tell me these are in the same ball park.
I'm quite suprised theres so many Safari users there. I guess it just comes down to how much value you put on each visitor, obviously a arcade site or similar wouldn't be too bothered, where as a property site would, as that 1 person may turn into a buyer if they could use the site.. frenchmen77 mentioned that the site wasn't very important, so that speaks for itself really - no point fixing it yet unless its a quick 5 minute job.. Matt.
Do keep in mind that Opera may be seriously under-reported. The default ID string has been IE, to get around stupid web developers who do browser sniffing. cheers, gary
as an opera user, I really hope all webdesigners design for opera but i guess it all depends on your target audience and their requirements =)
I switched to Opera yesterday. And I had concerns about people thinking Opera is being used less and IE has that extra percent because Opera shows it's IE by default. This is why nobody should really count on browser statistics to see who's using what. Even people with Firefox sometimes change their useragent. I once set mine to say I was using a browser by google. I haven't noticed any problems with displaying anything. Every site is identical to how it was in Firefox, except Opera seems to be more strict. I made a little mistake and some code got put before my doctype, which screwed up the text sizes in Opera but not Firefox.
I agree with the above as whan I was using a Linux system I changed the useragent to something other than what I was using. As i mentioned in my reply earlier if you try and validate the page you should have no problems really, I try and it seams that the only (majority of code) time it will not validate is when I use third party code from image links or java scripts. I think most web designer who are worth their salt will test a site on Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera. I test in all the above using a iMac and on a PC just for my own satisfaction. I also try and get a friend of my to also check the site too.
I must say validating the site doesn't always help solving your problems...but the first thing you do before looking at the problem is fixing all errors so it is valid. then you can have a closer look at it. often you can solve the problem with conditional comments ...but I really think all we together will solve the problem in no time if you just post the link best regards, chriggi
Are you using the HTML and CSS validation tools at w3.org? That's the first place to start to create an interoperable site. The second step is to substantially dumb down the code so it work in IE. Then try the other browsers. Depending on what you are doing you might have to move to at least to XHTML 1.0 Transitional as HTML 4.01 Transitional is not predictable across browsers. For what it's worth, XHTML 1.0 Strict - the next step up - is the easiest to code in and the most portable. In the early years of the auto industry cautious buyers gave Ford an eighty-percent market share. In the early years of the computer industry cautious buyers gave IBM an eighty-percent market share. In the early years of the Internet monopolized buyers.... Point is, diversity is coming to browsers like everything else as the Internet matures. The tools at w3.org are a great first step towards getting something that works across browsers.
These are the figures of the browsers people utilized to visit one of my sites. MS Internet Explorer 95.1 % Firefox 2.6 % Unknown 1.1 % Mozilla 0.3 % Netscape 0.1 % Safari 0.1 % Opera 0.1 % WebCopier 0.1 % Hope this helps.
If you had read all other posts you would have known that opera changes his useragent to IE on default...(I think the good counters can find that out...but I don't know what you are using) and all other browsers can also change their useragents...I don't think you should rely on such stats...Just try to make them work in all browsers...it ain't that hard
why? you should make it as compatible as possible! and it really shouldnt be a problem to fix it...but I'm not sure if the guy who posted the thread still reads it oO