As a web development company, the web browser is among the most important piece of software to our work. Naturally we have wrote about the browser plenty, such as our waning support of Internet Explorer 6 and State of the Browser. What we have not touched on, is what do recommend.

Our Browser Recommendations

Here are our recommendations for browsers: Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. As of this writing, Chrome is at version 10, available for download on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Firefox is at version 4, also available on Windows, Mac, Linux. Safari is available for Windows and Mac and is currently at version 5. This browser is also the default browser on Mac OS X.

Why these browsers

There are a number of reasons why we recommend these. The browsers that most closely comply with open standards are the ones that make our jobs easier. One such test of these standards is the acid3 test. This test checks the performance of the browser against CSS, SVG, DOM, and Javascript standards among others. Chrome and Safari get 100% on this test. Firefox does not get 100% but comes close at 97%.

There are a number of new features available in HTML5 and new W3C APIs that are available, such as Geolocation API and client side storage. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari have implemented  many of these features.

Honorable Mention

Opera gets an honorable mention. All of the above features mentioned, Opera is right there with them. The only reason why opera was not included was that it is not popular on the American desktop. It’s very popular with game consoles and mobile phones, it’s also very popular in Europe. Here in the states it’s just not popular, it works just a little bit different than most browsers do here. That said Opera is a great browser, if you want to try something different, go for it.

Up to date

Whichever browser you choice, it’s important to keep it up to date. The browsers mentioned in this post all have update mechanisms. Make sure that you use them.