A quick note to my readers: I'm writing a lot about Squirrel Clock because that is what I'm working about right now, over the next weeks until Squirrel Clock is released I'm going to write about the design choices I've made and about the development process, if you don't care don't worry, the blog will return to the previous topics some time in December, if you do care tell every one you know who may need to track attendance to register to be notified when Squirrel Clock is ready, anyone who registers will get 20% off the list price, this is a one-time chance that will go away the second Squirrel Clock is released.
One of the big issues in developing a web-based application is browser compatibility, each and every browser behave just slightly different and any web application that has a rich UI has to be tested and modified for each individual browser.
On one hand supporting less browsers will result in less work and let me get Squirrel Clock ready sooner and with more features, on the other hand turning away paying customers because they like to use a different web browser than Me is bad for business (also, I believe people have a right to use whatever makes them happy, if they prefer FireFox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari or Opera it's their choice and I have to respect that).
So, after considering all my options I've decided to support Internet Explorer 7 and 8, as well as the latest versions of FireFox, Chrome and Safari.
The application should look and function exactly the same on those 5 browsers (except for rounded corners and drop shadows that will not be supported on Internet Explorer, sorry about that).
Internet Explorer 9 will be supported when it comes out of beta or when customers ask for it (whatever comes first), I may add some support for Internet Explorer 6 if I see enough people are still using it - but it will not be fully supported, in IE6 the application will work but won't look right.
I believe by supporting those browsers I'll cover well over 90% of all potential customers.
posted @ Friday, November 19, 2010 7:00 AM