A few years ago, there weren't many different versions of web browsers to choose from. Now there are dozens. Actually, there's over 100 different browsers, not counting different versions of same product. Quite a number of these names I had never heard of before - here's a list of browsers currently available:

1X, Act 10, ActiveBrowser, Active Worlds, Alice, Amaya, ANT Fresco, Arachne, AvantGo, AWeb-II, Beonex Communicator, Browse-X, Charon, Chimera, CipherNet, Clickgarden, CrystalPort, CubicEye, DocZilla, E:ID Frame, Encompass, Enigma, Escape, ezWAP, FairLighHTML Viewer, Fast Browser, Galeon, Go.Web, Grail, Grasshopper V1, Home Page Reader, HotJava, iBrowse, IBrowser, iBrowserPlus, iCab, ICE Browser, I-Comm, iConnecter, InfoScanner, Internet Explorer, IPowerPortal WebBrowser, KBrowser MIPS Edition, KBrowser Palm Edition, Kidnet Explorer, Klondike Web Browser, K-Meleon, Konqueror, Konqueror/Embedded, Links, Lynx, Lynx for Amiga, Micro Digital Browser, Mobile Explorer, Mozilla, MSN Explorer, Multilingual Mosaic, MultiWeb

but wait, there's more!......

Neoplanet, Nestor, Netcaptor, NetClue, NetPositive, NetRaider, Netscape, Net-Tamer, Newt's Cape, Nokia Wap Browser, oKID Browser, Oligo, OmniWeb, Openwave Mobile Browser, Opera, Orangotango VirtualBrowser, Oregano, Palmscape, Pendragon Browser, Pixo Internet Microbrowser, Planetweb browser, Pocket Browser, Palm Browser, Pocket IE, ProxiWeb, Q.Bati, RapidBrowser, Safexplorer, SlipKnot, SpeedSeek Portal Solution, SPIN, StarDesktop, TV Interactor, UltraBrowser, ViOS, Voyager, w3m, Wapaka, WAPman, Web, WebsterXL, WebPhace, WebTV, WeMedia Talking Browser, Whack Force, WWW/LX, XBrowser, Yalzer, Yoozee.

Choice is a wonderful thing, but proliferation of browser software has also increased confusion in consumers as to what they should use. It also been major bugbear of web developers.

The good news for developers is that vast majority of web surfers use either Internet Explorer or Netscape - approximately 95%. The bad news is that there are over 200 flavours of Internet Explorer and Netscape. Web pages can look totally different between different versions.

The common arguement used by web developers to avoid dealing with compatibility issues is that as percentage of people using Netscape is relatively low, around 10% mark globally, - it isn't worthwhile taking those users into account. This is probably not a wise way approach issue, especially for an ecommerce based site. 10% can make a big difference to your bottom line as it's not only Internet Explorer users who buy goods and services online.

You may be of opinion "my server logs show that only 5 percent of my visitors use Netscape, so I'm not going to bother too much about cross browser compatibility". Perhaps you would have more Netscape visitors by making some minor changes to your coding that would better present your web material to them. Netscape users also have a tendency to switch to IE from time to time. If they have had a bad experience on your site using Netscape, they may not even bother visiting it again under a different browser.

Even if you do target your site to a particular brand of browser; you then need to contend with different versions of that brand. For example; a site designed for IE5.5 may look different under IE4.

The simple solution is for everyone to upgrade their browser? True, but who are we to dictate what people use on their systems? Some people do not have equipment capable to do this. The later versions of Internet Explorer demand massive system resources.

Larger Fortune 500 firms now have handed most of responsibility for web work to their internal Information Technology (IT) depts. While marketing continues to have a say, IT will make most of vendor decisions. This is a shift which could be problematic for web design shops or individual consultants if they have traditionally dealt with marketing departments and maintained those relationships. Marketing and IT departments have traditionally been at odds within most companies. Many web design firms may not have technical breadth and depth to be IT consultants; therefore they have never really built strong ties with IT. Since they have not built these ties, it becomes more difficult to gain business from IT departments. However, many independent consultants who moved into web space do have an IT background, and therefore they can easily make transition to becoming a consultant to an IT dept.

As web moves beyond brochureware stage for these clients, as they provide more functionality; they are more and more intertwined with their legacy systems. As they become more connected to business systems, standard bearer of business systems, IT, becomes more involved. As IT becomes more involved, they will tend to turn to contractors they have been using: usually independent IT consultants or larger consulting firms which they may already have on board to do other IT consulting work.

The web is moving from medium to application. As it moves from medium to application, user experience becomes part of an application, as opposed to user experience being application. For example, when web was young, web was more of a medium: similar to TV and radio, it was not that interactive, and while there was some interactivity, this interactivity was usually not interconnected to core business practices. The look and feel, interface, ultimate user experience was goal to hit. In a few cases, there was a defined task flow which user could follow, but in early days, users were more expected to explore than to be guided.