Don’t use Firefox to Test Your Website In.
If you’re a web developer you’re bound to come across this. You just designed a great looking web page that excels your expectations. It’s looks greats, is easy to navigate, and you know it’s going to knock your client off his feet. You go to preview it in Firefox and it looks perfect, just as it did in the web editor your designed it in. You publish your site to the web, sit back and relax. You’re just waiting for the praises from the person who trusted you to put them on the web.
In about three minutes you get a all for the client and you become the one who gets knocked off his feet. They complain the text is overlapping different parts of the page it shouldn’t, some of the links don’t work, and there’s a blue transparent film around some of the images.
You quickly fire off Firefox and go to the website, but all looks normal. You are perplexed until it hits you. They are using Internet Explorer.
Besides being a haven for rogue toolbars that won’t uninstall, spyware, and one of the slowest browsers out there, Internet Explorer also doesn’t support web standards like other browsers do. It doesn’t have the support for CSS, tables, images (like PNGs), and other elements that Firefox has.
So don’t use Firefox to test your websites, not because it’s a bad browser, but because it’s an awesome browser, created by people who really care about the needs and methods of web developers. It’s not that Microsfoft is evil (we at STC really like Microsoft), it’s just that they really don’t focus on IE like they should. Internet Explorer also has the largest market share (even though they are steadily losing it) and most people who view your site will be rendering your page in it.
So next time you need to see if there are any subtle hidden “flaws” in your website, don’t use Firefox. Firefox is too nice and cares about your feelings.