Web Browsers

... and the ACID test.

Most modern web browsers are now compatible with the internationally recognised W3C standard for website coding. For example; this site is W3C compliant. We recommend using FireFox or Opera to view any website as the author coded it.

Either or both can be downloaded completely FREE by clicking on the links above. You can run more than one browser on your computer which gives you a chance to see the differences.

If you are still using Internet Explorer (which is far from compliant - see below) then we really do recommend that you upgrade to one of these (we prefer FireFox).  Click on the logo of the one you prefer to go to the download site.

Why?

Acid (now Acid3) is a series of independent tests to establish the compliance of a web browser with recognised standards. The highe the compliance with the standards the more you will see of the content of each website you visit.

If you are using a Browser which is less than 60% compliant then there is a very high chance that you will simply not see much of the content of many professionally scripted websites. We would certainly not recommend using a browser which is less than 85% compliant.

LINKS:

Acid WIKI site:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3

Acid3 TEST:  http://acid3.acidtests.org/

Also see eMail client issues:

Why might it be important to use a compliant browser?

Older websites are usually quite simple compared to modern ones. So; tweaking the code behind a website so that it rendered (displayed) properly in popular non-compliant websites was not a big (or expensive) problem.

As websites become more complex and more powerful; using commercial-grade Content Management Systems (CMS) and 'Web 2.0'  applications like eCommerce, CRM and ERP, the problem becomes much bigger and much more expensive.

Increasingly, website builders are using the international accepted standards (W3C) as the benchmark to prove that they have delivered acceptable code to their clients. 'Tweaking' a very large website so that it also (simultaneously) renders on a proprietary, non-compliant browser is very expensive. Increasingly clients will not opt for this expensive option.

Therefore, the very best (compiant) websites will become less and less available to those using non-compliant browsers.

This is already the case with some major corporate websites and even more of the community informational sites.

Note:  IE (any version) does not support either HTML 5 or "WebKit" resulting in a 80% hit on java performance. Not only will you not even see  many features of modern standards-compliant websites, but they will operate at only a fifth of the speed.