Four working browsers (at least)

There's just something about having four different browsers on your computer, to say the least. I do believe I've Lynx installed as well, but it's hardly used these days ... for better or worse.

Firefox 1.5.0.6
Internet Explorer 7.0.5450.4 (i.e., 7.0 Beta 3)
Opera 9.01-8552
Netscape 8.1

Best of all? My site displays great in all four.

There are other browsers to test, of course, but the question is whether it's really necessary to do so. Both Flock and Mozilla seem like a waste to install, since they (like Netscape) are so much fluff.

Lynx is actually a pretty good browser for a developer, and what do you know, I do have a version from 10/2005 on my computer (2.8.5rel1).

Want a copy? Download it from http://strivinglife.net/lynx/.

If I had a Mac, I'd test my site with Safari, but alas I do not.

If I had a Linux machine that connected to the Internet (perhaps fairly soon ...) then I would test Konqueror and the like.

The lessons are two-fold.

1) If you're working on a site, test it in multiple browsers. Honestly, with today's world, there's no reason people shouldn't upgrade to the newest version of their preferred browser. Not only do you get better security, but you also get a better browsing experience. I recommend Firefox, but no matter which browser you choose, if it's up-to-date, and still being supported (i.e., it's not a dead browser, but patched to the latest version), it's okay in my book (some are just better than others).

2) Keep your browser up-to-date. You don't need to have the bleeding edge beta releases (in fact, you probably don't want to either), but at least keep your browser fully patched. Don't like how they upgraded the browser in a future release? It's not only selfish to keep using that old version, but also dangerous. And you can always switch to a browser that allows more customization (like Firefox).