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From a development stand-point: Is it worth it to have Google Chrome and Safari?

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Dec 12.2008

For web development, I make sure I check my pages in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera to ensure that all of their unique rendering engines will render the page suitably. I was considering downloading Safari for Windows from Apple, but I know that it uses Webkit which is what Google Chrome uses. Even with this, could there still be some fundamental differences between how the browsers render my page for viewing or is one browser with a particular layout engine enough for development?

I noticed that the Acid3 tests appear to go by layout engine and not browser.

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@drhowarddrfineDec 12.2008 — I haven't been testing in Chrome. I hear that, right now, there are some differences attributed to rendering. One person said because Chrome uses an earlier version of Webkit? I don't know.

I'm waiting for Chrome to get their latest version on Linux and to go version 1.0 which, uh, is today!
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@mrhooDec 17.2008 — You'd do well to have a mac machine for testing Safari and Firefox/mac, and an old relic pc just for testing. The lower the cpu and ram, the better.

If you don't have an old pc, you can pick one up for peanuts.

Develop on the latest and greatest, but nothing tells you so much so fast about your code as old hardware.
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@toicontienDec 18.2008 — ... Develop on the latest and greatest, but nothing tells you so much so fast about your code as old hardware.[/QUOTE]

Amen to that! I'm on an old POS windows machine doing dev work. My colleagues tell me I'm crazy for wanting to write efficient code because it works just fine on their brand new Mac laptop or desktop. ?

As for testing in Safari and Chrome, you should use both. While Chrome uses Webkit for the layout engine (HTML and CSS), Google programmed their own JavaScript interpretter. The JavaScript interpretter for Safari and Chrome are two entirely different beasts.
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@Jeff_MottDec 19.2008 — Yahoo's [url=http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/#gbschart]A-Grade Browser Support Chart[/url] is the de facto standard for which browsers you should be checking in. Which means Safari, definitely. Chrome, really doesn't matter.
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@toicontienDec 19.2008 — Yahoo's [url=http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/#gbschart]A-Grade Browser Support Chart[/url] is the de facto standard for which browsers you should be checking in. Which means Safari, definitely. Chrome, really doesn't matter.[/QUOTE]

At this point, no not [I]really[/I], but Google has recently taken Chrome out of beta, which means it could be more aggressively marketing the browser. Who knows what they have in store. Let's do a little recap of the last year of technology. ?

Apple comes out with the iPhone.

Apple comes out with Safari for Windows.

The iPhone runs Safari.

Most web developers, which Apple disparately needs in order to create iPhone apps, run Windows and not Mac OS.

Now most developers can develop applications for the iPhone.

iPhone is a big hit.

Google comes out with [I]its[/I] smart phone.

Google comes out with a browser that it tweaked to be REALLY fast at executing JavaScript.

Could Chrome be used on Google's smart phone like Safari is on the iPhone?

Could Google be releasing a browser to developers so they have the same software to test Google smart phone web apps on that Google's phone uses or will use?

So that's why Chrome does count. I think Google is making a desktop web application platform, and a mobile device web application platform. It is not immediately essential, but will be down the road.

Also as I said before, [I]the JavaScript interpretter is different between Chrome and Safari[/I], so if your site uses JavaScript, Chrome at least deserves a cursory glance.
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@Jeff_MottDec 19.2008 — If Chrome becomes widely used or widely deployed, then certainly. But for now it isn't, and it's possible it may never be. There's certainly no harm in ensuring your site works in Chrome, but I don't think it's a necessity.
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@toicontienDec 19.2008 — I agree, but only would like to add that a cursory testing session with Chrome is necessary. Just test the parts of your site that might be problematic. Other than that, if it works in Firefox, Opera and Safari, there's a snowball's chance in Antarctica that it works fine in Chrome (meaning it should work just fine ?).
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