Browser Compatibility

2010 Browser Usage

For years now I figured that most issues between the different web browsers had stabilized, or at least worked fine with my web pages. The html code used with the Engineering Web Site is pretty basic, nothing special, but there was a time when I checked the pages between the different internet browsers.

Primarily I would be looking for layout changes between the different browsers, small changes in spacing or page breaks. As a rule the pages were always working between the different programs. But all that was a long time ago, I stopped checking page issues half a dozen years ago. Back then I would load all the different web browsers on the PC and check pages for compatibility.

Now I just run the three major browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. However I don't run them looking for problems, I run them with each one opening different windows and or passwords.

Anyway over the last few months I've noticed page layout issues with my unique 404 page [the page that displays on a mistyped web address]. I sort of looked at it but never really did any thing about it because I couldn't find the problem. Now I realize that the layout problem was only showing up in Google Chrome, which I hadn't noticed before. With three different browsers it's kind of random which pages show up in which browser depending on what I'm working on.

So I have three different style of pages, and two of those styles use the HTML 'DIV' tag which puts a column on either the right or left side of the page. The pages that use the DIV tag to put a column on the right side of the page seems to work in all three browsers. However the pages that use a DIV to add a left hand column don't seem to work in Google Chrome. Any text or graphic that uses a 'center' tag is forced out of the column and below the content of the main section. So left margin text remains in the div column while a 'center' graphic is pushed out into the adjacent column.

Lucky for me, the pages with the issue only account for 1% of the page-views or around 37,000 pageviews. Ten percent of that are people using Google Chrome viewing only 370 pages in these sections. The 14 pages that account for most of the issue [0.67%] were just fixed as well as some of the others. The thing is, if you never scrolled down to the bottom of the page, the layout problem might not have even been noticed.

Oh, the fix is to just remove the center tag around the graphics in the left column. That was the quick fix, there must be an html coding issue with the div tags, but the point is to get them working right now....

So the advice would be to check you pages in all the browsers.

The pie chart represent 4,221,889 pageviews year-to-date for the web site.
239,690 of those page views were from people using Google Chrome.
.

IE 8 takes forever to shut down

I'm not really sure why but Internet Explorer takes a long time to close down. When I close down a single tab, the tab closes right away. However when I close down the program it takes forever to shut down, with the first few tabs taking the longest amount of time. I always have three browsers open; IE, Firefox and Chrome.

I tried looking up reasons on the web, but no luck. Just a bunch of real old IE crashing issues or out of date info.

Anyway here is how the top five browsers are doing on the engineering site: Explorer usage continues to decline, while Firefox seems to have stalled. Both browsers seem to be getting hurt by the increase in Chrome usage. Chrome did not exist before 2009.



1/1/2010 to 8/21/2010
Internet Explorer = 49.08%  [800,493 visitors]
Mozilla Firefox = 35.15% [573,338 visitors]
Google Chrome = 8.66% [141,218 visitors]

Visitors by Web Browser

Just in case any one is still following the Browser wars. The chart shows the type of browser used by visitors to the web site so far this year. Click the graphic for a larger image. The related links below provide graphs of previous years data. All the data shown here is from Google Analyics for visitors to the interface bus site.


Browser Comparison
       Firefox vs. Internet Explorer
2009 = 34.12% vs. 56.22%
2008 = 30.01% vs. 63.36%
2007 = 25.10% vs. 69.06%
2006 = 20.93% vs. 73.08%

Related Postings.
Is there a Browser War, 6/11/08.
Web Browser Issues, 7/4/06.

You can see from the chart that Google Chrome which just started a year ago is already getting 3% of the traffic or users, winning out over Opera.

MS Web Site Issues

OUTDATED TEXT REMOVED, 6-28-2010

Same thing happened with the browser that Google came out with; Chrome. I could not access the site data using that browser either ~ There is a previous post about that issue, I think. So now, Firefox now longer works. What, it's an MS site, so only Internet Explorer will work on a Microsoft Soft web site.........

Any way I posted a graphic which shows hits to serialphy.com, which is another site I operate. The two main items are the Orange line which shows unique visits, and the yellow line which depicts number of visits.

I see an increase in visitors, so I'm fine with that. Notice I do not provide any hard numbers ~ there to low...... Oh, November is low because it's still mid-month, so that data will not be available for another 15 days.

Googl Chrome Stats

I'm not seeing any real increase in visits from the Google Chrome browser.

But, I just noticed something else..... I was just out trying to check a new page that was added a few days ago, which had a link off of one of the dictionary pages. However the page did not contain the link to the new page. Checked the server and the server showed the page was just up-dated a few days ago. Hmm, I hit the 'reload this page button' and the link shows up, "Pulse Shape".

In Internet Explorer, for example, there is an option to 'Automatically' check for a newer version of the page, but I can not find that option in the Chrome Browser. Yea, we don't like that........

Browser Analytics

I took another look at how Google Chrome is doing on the web site, or with the web site. Seems the new browser is doing good. As the attached graphic shows, in the last several days Google Chrome has now reached 1.61% of the traffic. That's not so bad for just a few days, it's already at number five in the list. Click that graphic for a larger view...

Seems like by next week it will pass both Safari and Opera and place third on the list. If I remember I'll post again next month to show how the new Browser is doing....

Google Chrome Web Broswer

Just down loaded and started using Google Chrome and already found a bug. When I try to open my MS Office Live site, Microsoft sends me to a page saying I need to use either IE or Foirfox and it provides links to down load them? Hello, I'm using Chrome.... There's a screen shot just above, click to see a larger image.

Here is a link to down load the new broswer: http://www.google.com/chrome

Each of my sites seem to render ok, I don't see any issues.

Hmm, I just made another bug report. The pages do not always open from the top, but several inches down from the top. Clicking a link to go to a new page, the new page opens half way down its page.

Yet another bug, I think. I was out editing one of my Knol's and I noticed that there were no words underlined as misspelled. There should have been many terms 'high-lighted' as misspelled because of all the acronyms used [knol]. In fact, I see a misspelled word here that is not highlighted? Guess I will report this bug too.

A few hours later I noticed that the address bar is also used a the search bar. I came to that conculsion after not being able to find the search bar and just words typing into the address bar ~ and it worked. Now I see an artical in cnn that indicates the same thing. Google calls it the Omni Box