Not All Browsers are Equal

Best Rendering Engines

The two best engines are Webkit and Gecko. Gecko is an older engine, that is more resource intensive than Webkit, but also has many more features, like a platform independent development environment. Webkit is almost exclusively used for advanced mobile platforms like: Apple iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, Google products like Chrome, Android, and Chrome OS, as well as Palm and Nokia's mobile devices.

Webkit

Webkit has lead the development of CSS 3 and other next generation web technologies, that allow us to do things one requiring advanced programming, or the use of Flash. There are some subtle differences between the different Webkit implementations, based on which company's version and what product version is being compared. Google's Chrome uses a different Javascript engine than Apple and Google Chrome sometimes disables certain features, for security reasons, like web fonts. Apple's mobile Safari only supports one type of web font, which is an unusual font format, and has restrictions on the amount of time Javascript can run, on its mobile devices. The effectiveness of anti-aliasing (making graphics smooth) in Webkit varies widely by platform.

Presto

Presto varies widely, from the advanced features of the desktop version of Opera, to the Opera Mini version, which reformats website, seemingly randomly and has serious problems, with rendering most sites, even legibly. Presto is also used in several Nintendo products, like the Wii and DS. No one else uses Presto, other than Opera, or those who pay for it, because Presto is not open source, like Gecko and Webkit.

Opera Mini Popularity

Opera Mini has as many users as Opera on the desktop. Opera mini is popular on cell phones, that cannot run a full featured web browser, or for people with slow connections, like 2G cell phones. Opera Mini's main feature is that it does the rendering on Opera' Server and then compresses the web page and the images, to make it load faster, but this causes problems with interactivity, security, and readability.

Defects of Opera Mini

The compression of images is particularly atrocious, because web graphics are generally as compressed, as they can be, without being unrecognizable. The layout, in terms of columns or headers and footers, is also compromised as well. Fonts are also only rendered in one typeface, one size, and one style.

Solutions to Opera Mini Defects

Another problem with Opera is that formatting could be specified, to be simpler for Opera, without dumbing it down, for the other more advanced web browsers. This could be done by just disabling images and stylesheets, or using the handheld stylesheets, specified by the site designer. Then, instead of pages becoming unreadable, they could just show a simpler version, of the website, for Opera Mini.

Trident

Microsoft uses Trident in its Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer Mobile browsers, but the mobile one is generally several versions behind the desktop version. Microsoft's Mac products have often used an entirely different rendering engine called Talisman. Internet Explorer 6-8 does not render websites correctly, so some hacks have to be used if you want precise layout and the other option is to give up precise positioning and allow your website's white space to vary between Internet Explorer 6-8 and other browsers.

Worst Web Browsers

There are other less known web browsers, based on different rendering engines, including the web browser that comes with Sony Playstation and the one used in the Blackberry mobile phones. These browsers can hardly even render text properly, and should disable images and stylesheets. In addition, the Blackberry web browser also is terribly slow as well. And the testing software for Blackberry is written in Java, but is so poorly written, that it only runs, under Java, on Windows.

Why Upgrade Browsers?

Keeping up with the latest version of your web browser also helps protect you from Internet based worms, spyware, adware, scams, and identity theft. I am also very aware of the kind of features being used by other web designers and have factored that in, so if you stick with what software I recommend, for my website, you will be in good shape, for the best experience, at most other cutting edge websites, as well. Newer browsers generally give better performance including being much faster on the slowest websites and make better use of the hardware your computer has like RAM and GPU.

Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft has just released version 9, of Internet Explorer, to the public, as it has made it through testing. I have been able to test it today, on my website, through a web browser testing service. The simple design, which is mostly yellow and one column works fine, with every version of Internet Explorer version 7 and higher. If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, then you can upgrade Internet Explorer, to version 9.My website looks fine, in the advanced version, with Internet Explorer 9. It renders the fonts, layered backgrounds, transparency, angled backgrounds, rounded corners, and drop caps very well, but it does not support the text shadow, on the headings. I was unable to test the audio, that works, without requiring another program, on the virtual machine I used.

Another thing to check is the performance of Internet Explorer 9. If you can run Windows 7, with all its special effects, without any lag or slow downs, then it probably will work well, but if you bought a cheap laptop (or netbook), then it is likely that it will be slow (much slower than even the previous versions). One way to get it faster relatively cheaply is to add more RAM. I would recommend that you check the websites, that you frequent, to make sure they are compatible, as this browser has had a complete overhaul. Also the 64 bit version has much worse performance, to the point of being almost unusable, and should be avoided.

Security is improved greatly and the interface is now much more minimalistic - the controls are smaller, which gives you more space, for the web pages. If you use tabs, then you will likely have  trouble using more than a few of them at once, because of Microsoft wanting to give extra space, for web pages. Search is now built into the address bar, so that would make me concerned about how the web browser knows, if you are typing in an address, or a search term, without having to type in special commands. The fonts look much smoother, but some people with poor eyesight will find the text harder to read. Things have also been changed significantly, for accessibility features, used by those who are sight impaired, so they might need to update screen readers, for this new version of Internet Explorer.

New Developments: Don't Do Anything

I have learned some new things, after: finding some good design magazines online, having invested in some more software/services, and that some new techniques are now available, that have matured recently. The result of these new developments is, that I was able, to get the custom fonts and many of the special effects, on my website, to work, with Internet Explorer 6-8.

The performance appears fine software wise, bit I don't know how much RAM, or how fast a processor is necessary, for reasonable/usable performance. The custom fonts look much better, on Internet Explorer 7, or higher. I was able to come close, to making the ideal design available, similarly to how it appears, in most of the more popular new browser, in Internet Explorer 6-8, but the performance suffers noticeably, as well as there being 2 many layers, for all the background designs, to show up correctly.

I can now fully test, for every major version of Internet Explorer, from 6 on, and can now support most, of the modern features, on these versions. I still recommend upgrading your browser to a better one, because of the security and performance benefits alone.