Chapter 22
Browser Recommendations
The “big five browsers” are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla’s
Firefox (FF), Google’s Chrome (Chr), Apple’s Safari (Saf), and Opera Soft-
ware’s Opera (Op). Each is free. Just download it, install it, and you can
run it.
Historically, Internet Explorer has had the largest market share, by which
we mean it is installed on more computers and used by more people than any
other browser. This has changed. It is still widely used, but not dominant.
Web designers have hated Internet Explorer because it does not support
the official standards for webpages. It has been a nightmare. (I am not
exaggerating.) But the good news is that Microsoft seems to be making real
progress toward being “standards compliant.”
Being standards compliant is a bit of a moving target. Probably none of the
major browsers (or minor ones, for that matter) are fully compliant. But
Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari tend to be very close, and much closer
that Internet Explorer (historically).
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer comes pre-installed with Windows, and is not
available for Apple OS X or Linux.
Chrome:https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/is the home-
page for Google’s Chrome Browser. It is free.
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/is the homepage for
Mozilla Firefox. It is free.
Opera:http://www.opera.com/download/is the download page for Opera.