No! Don’t groan! I can be long winded, yes, but this one’s short and sweet. There was a point I had wanted to add to the last post but as happens, it got left out. But it is a good one… why, exactly, do I care so much about which browsers user which rendering engines? Or even on their general history?

When I’m checking to see if my web pages work across various platforms and various browsers, I don’t have to start out by going through and checking how they appear in an all encompassing, exhausting review using each and ever on any and all. If I hit the four main engines in the order of their percentage of use: Trident, Gecko, Presto (Opera), and KHTML, I’m in a very good position. Granted, for more troublesome nit picky detail, it is possible for two different gecko-based browsers to have different problems with some bit of HTML or CSS or JS or other, but in the main, I’ve likely shaken out all the major glaring problems in the most efficient manner.

Knowing that Safari has the lion’s share of the Mac OS lets me ensure that I’ve taken care of the majority of Mac users by checking with that one. If there’s some issue with MacIE, I can pretty much leave it alone or let it degrade. Or if I’m pressed for time, I can choose Safari over MacIE or Camino or Mac Firefox and get pretty good Mac coverage.

Speaking of which, I’m aware that this blog doesn’t display well in Safari. I’m hoping to have some time on a borrowed Mac soon to figure out why.

One thing I find fascinating is the way in which browsers have gone forth and multiplied over this world. It’s not immediately obvious, but some browsers are actually quite closely related. What follows is a rough chronology of the more well known browsers. There were (and are) many more, of course, and a browse through the sources listed at the end may be of interest.

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