Different browser for www / develpment / testing

I think your inference that the use of Chrome as a browser used to access this site implies an increase in the use of Chrome *for development* is fundamentally flawed. As "R" says, most developers will use multiple browsers and the browser I use for development may bear no relation to the one I use for accessing the Internet.

As a developer you MUST develop your site for the browser used by the majority of your users. So if the vast majority of your users are using IE (around 54% [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers]) and FF (29%) then those are the browsers you must use for final testing of your software. Sure they might be slower at running Javascript than Chrome or browser "XYZ" but that is the WHOLE POINT - you need to know how fast or slow your pages & pages of Javascript are going to run "in the real world" (i.e. using the most prevalent browser and on an "average" specification PC) not on your super-fast-highly-configured development machine!

I personally develop using FF (with a boat-load of extensions) but prior to release of the software I perform function and speed tests on IE, Opera, Netscape, Avant, Chrome and (Win-) Safari. I assume all professional developers do the same! ;)

Geoff

If you read the article again, you may notice that nowhere it was mentioned that the users are switching to Chrome for development.

What was said is that many PHP developers (almost 10%) using this site have switched to Chrome in just one year.

Nobody disputed the fact that developers should use different browsers to test their sites.

[quote] If you read the article again, you may notice that nowhere it was mentioned that the users are switching to Chrome for development. [/quote]

Well I think you should have made this clearer in your blog since that is obviously the impression that I (and several of the other commentators) have got from reading your post.

Particularly when you go on to discuss the reasons for people not switching are due to the lack of Firebug / Javascript debuggers / HTTP headers display. These are obviously *not* something one needs in a simple 'web site browser' !

Regards,
Geoff

You are assuming that everybody uses different browsers for developing sites and for browsing the Web.

Most people I know only use one main browser for doing everything and then may use other browsers to test HTML, JavaScript and CSS related issues. What the article is talking about is the main browser used by either accessing sites and do the main development. That is why those extensions are relevant.

I do not think most users are developing sites with one browser and switch to another browser just to access this site, especially when this site is used by developers looking for PHP components to study or use in their projects.

No, I am not assuming that - rather it is *you* who are assuming that all developers use the same browser for development as they do for accessing the web. I merely point out this might not be true.

You may be right but that is not proven by your statistics. That is the sole point of my original post.