16.4. The World Wide Web Consortium

As I stated earlier, the World Wide Web Consortium is, in most instances, the source of all things Web related. For this reason, I recommend that you occasionally visit its website, www.w3.org, to peruse the home page and see if there is anything new. In fact, this is one of those great spots to determine which skill to learn next. After all, unless we keep our skills current, or even a little more than current, it is quite possible that we could go the way of the dinosauror, at least, the way of the majority of American steel workers.

The World Wide Web Consortium is also one of those websites, like SourceForge, where it is possible to find some free goodies. However, unlike SourceForge, most people think of only documentation when they think of the World Wide Web Consortium. Fortunately, there is much more to the World Wide Web Consortium than a mere collection of HTML pages and PDF files. Many people don't realize that, in addition to the all the documents describing various technologies, there are quite often documents describing support for those various technologiessuch as which web browsers support CSS Level 1, information that can be of some use when shopping for a new web browser.

16.5. Web Browsers
The scary part about this section is that I had to actually look to see which web browsers are installed on my Toshiba notebook. Over the last several months, my collection has grown beyond my usual two browsers to include the following (in alphabetical order):

Firefox (www.mozilla.org)

Flock (www.flock.com)

Microsoft Internet Explorer (www.microsoft.com)

Netscape (http://browser.netscape.com)

Opera (www.opera.com)

In addition to adding browsers beyond the original two, several Firefox upgrades were installed during the same timeframe.

All in all, I discovered several interesting things about these browsers and myself. The first is that, as annoying as Microsoft Internet Explorer is, it pales in comparison to Opera. Opera is closed as tight as an oyster. In addition, some versions of Opera lie, claiming to be Microsoft Internet Explorer. This wouldn't be a problem if it behaved the same way as Microsoft Internet Explorer, but, unfortunately, it doesn't. In the end, I was forced to abandon Opera.

Of the remaining browsers, Firefox, Flock, and Netscape are all based upon Gecko, which means that if something works in one, it should work in all. In fact, I wasn't surprised to find this to be the case. Talk about consistency!

However, I want to point out one item concerning these browsers. Because they are open source, they have a tendency to change more often than Microsoft Internet Explorerbut, then, years change more often than Microsoft Internet Explorer. This could be an issue in testing to keep in mind.

Finally, there is Microsoft Internet Explorer, which, at this time, is still the number one web browser in use. Unlike the other browsers, unless you're running Windows or have an Apple computer, you're pretty much hosed if you want to run Internet Explorer. But there's always Firefox or Flock or Netscape.

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