As a web programmer, I build my sites to be "standards-compliant," which means that I follow the guidelines set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This ensures that my sites will display how they are supposed to across all decent web browsers, and will still look and function the same for years to come.
Ironically, not all web browsers are completely standards-compliant. To find out your browser's competence level, please visit the Acid3 Test.
Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox are some of the top-scoring web browsers, all of which use open-source frameworks to render the HTML code behind all websites: Safari and Chrome use Webkit, while Firefox, Flock, and Orca use the Gecko framework. These open-source frameworks are constantly revised and updated by people all over the world to properly render new recommendations made by the W3C.
Internet Explorer, on the other hand, has its own rendering engine developed by a proprietary source—Microsoft. As a result, the browser fits the standards of Microsoft—not the W3C—and therefore does not include support for the most recent W3C recommendations. Web developers like me have to jump through hoops to make their web pages display correctly in Internet Explorer. Some even build two separate sites: one for Internet Explorer and one for normal web browsers.
Here is a list of web browsers and their Acid3 Test score:
| Browser | Description | Version | Acid3 Score |
|---|---|---|---|
 Safari |
Default browser for Mac OS X; also available for Windows | 4.0.3 | 100% |
 Opera |
Very customizable browser with built-in support for many online protocols (chat, mail, torrent, etc.) | 10.01 | 100% |
 Google Chrome |
A simple and lightweight browser made by Google for Windows; Macintosh and Linux versions are still under development | 3.0 | 100% |
 Mozilla Firefox |
Very popular and versatile web browser that works on all operating systems. Make it your own with thousands of plug-ins to choose from. | 3.5.6 | 93% |
 Konqueror |
Default web browser on KDE Linux Systems | 4.3.1 | 89% |
 Flock |
Based on Firefox 3.0 with built-in support for many online social networks and web applications; available on all operating systems | 2.5.2 | 72% |
 Internet Explorer |
Default web browser on Windows Computers; completely worthless in my opinion | 8 | 20% |