Web browser standards supportThis document will summarize the level of support for standard web technologies by popular web browsers. It deals primarily with the Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera web browsers, with focus on the HTML, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript technologies. Not all of the standards are displayed here. In particular, some technologies that have consistently good or poor support by all major browsers or are seldom used aren‘t listed. These tables attempt to be as comprehensive as possible. Table of ContentsAccessibility featuresUpVisitors with visual impairments may take advantage of a magnified version or a monochrome version of these documents. In most web browsers, you can select your preferred view by going to the View menu and then Page Style or Style. This mechanism is not supported by Internet Explorer. How to interpret these tablesUpEach row corresponds to a feature of the particular web technology standard. In the full pages, the browser support for that feature is indicated by a single letter: Y (yes), N (no), or I (incomplete support). A question mark (?) means that the support for that feature is currently unknown. The values have been colored for readability. Most feature names in the full tables are links to the official standards definitions. The tables on this page are in summarized form. Instead of Y, N, and I, percentages are listed, showing the estimated percent of features with support. Incomplete support for a feature is calculated as a 50% support. Features with unknown levels of support are ignored. If more than 5% of the data under a particular standard is unknown, it simply lists a question mark. Feature names are links to the corresponding sections of the full tables. Some feature ratings in the full pages have explanations associated with them, particularly for those with an "I" rating. The explanations are stored in the title attribute of the table cell, which can usually be accessed by user agents with mouse support by hovering the mouse cursor over the table cell. In browsers that support CSS attribute selectors, these rating symbols are marked with an overline. There are three families of web browsers shown here by default: MSIE, Firefox, and Opera. MSIE includes Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows, Maxthon, Netscape in "I Trust This Site" or Internet Explorer mode, Avant Browser, AOL Browser, and other browsers that use the Trident rendering engine. (It should be noted that Internet Explorer for the Mac uses a different rendering engine.) Firefox includes Mozilla Firefox, the Mozilla suite, Seamonkey, Netscape in "I‘m Not Sure" or Netscape mode, Camino, Flock, Galeon, Epiphany, and other browsers that use the Gecko rendering engine. For features that are specific to the interface of the browser rather than simply the rendering engine, the named web browser is the browser being tested. How features are ratedUpIf the browser doesn‘t recognize a given feature or admits that the feature is not yet implemented, and the browser is supposed to do something with the feature, it receives an automatic N. If the browser appears to support a given feature completely with no significantly impairing bugs, the feature receives a Y. In other cases, the feature generally receives an I, often with an explanation attached (see above). For consistency reasons, it will receive an I even if the feature never performs a correct task or always returns an incorrect value, as long as the browser shows that it recognizes the feature and attempts to utilize it. A Y value can only be given if the feature is supported natively or by a plugin distributed as an official optional component of the web browser. If it requires a plugin not officially endorsed and distributed by the creators of the web browser, it can at best receive an I rating. If the feature requires a plugin, but there is no such plugin that is officially promoted by the creators of the browser, it receives an N. This is done because all major browsers have a variety of third party plugins available to extend the browser‘s standards support, and including them would defeat the purpose of judging the browser itself. All features are tested with webpages using valid HTML or XHTML markup with strict doctypes and doctype URLs. Some browsers will purposefully implement some features incorrectly when there are errors on the page, particularly when no doctype is used, or when certain types of doctypes are used. In order to see the following results, make sure that you are using valid strict markup on your webpage. You can check an HTML or XHTML document for validity by using the W3C HTML validator. Web technology standardsUpHTMLUpHTML is the primary language that makes up a webpage. It puts together all of the text, images, scripts, and other content. In most web browsers, you can view this page‘s HTML code by going to the View menu and selecting "Page Source" or "Source". This table is in summarized form. View the full tables
CSSUpCSS is the primary language for adding presentation elements to a webpage. These presentation elements include colors, fonts, backgrounds, and layout. The voice properties, which include the Angle, Frequency, and Time units, are accessibility extensions and are not necessarily required for all conforming web browsers. This table is in summarized form. View the full tables
DOMUpDOM is a model that allows scripting languages to handle browser input and output and manipulate information on webpages. This is essential for high-end web applications. This table is in summarized form. View the full tables ECMAScriptUpECMAScript is a language used to access and work with the DOM. It was developed as a standardized replacement for JavaScript and JScript. This table is in summarized form. View the full tables
About other browsersUpI am currently in the process of testing other browsers and versions, including Safari and Konqueror. I do not yet have estimated dates for when this information will be available. Other web browsers may be considered for future inclusion. If you would like to suggest a web browser or help collect data for any web browser not shown here, please post the relevant information in the discussion forums. DisclaimerUpMost of the above information comes from testing and research conducted by one person. It is possible that these tables contain errors. If you wish to correct an error or otherwise contribute to this information, please e-mail me at nanobot@gmail.com or visit the discussion forums. Contributions are highly appreciated. This article was written by David Hammond. It may be copied and distributed freely as long as it remains unaltered from its original form. See the license for details. This work is copyright ?2005 David Hammond and is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Icons used here were adapted from the Crystal icon theme, copyright ?2004 Everaldo and licensed under LGPL. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
