Web apps and cross browser capabilities
I remember when we released FreshBooks (then called 2ndSite) in May 2004. Back then the web was different – it was a little less mature, a little less evolved. AJAX was virtually unknown and the term Web 2.0 was a twinkle in Tim O’Reilly’s eye.
When we launched FreshBooks, our application was not cross platform or cross browser compliant. Seems crazy today that a web app would not be Mac compliant, but then – while not ideal – it was fairly common. The truth is we were three PC based developers and did not even have a Mac to test on, so we focused on what we knew and that was that.
It didn’t take long for us to start hearing from Mac users though, and I’m pleased to say by August 2004 were were Mac compliant and we’ve never looked back.
I’m thinking about all this today because Sunir and I (largely Sunir frankly) wrote an article for Mac News World about cross browser compatibility:
Building an application for today’s Web is a balancing act. Potential users use several competing browsers. Yet the user experience must be uniform for everyone, regardless of his/her browser of choice. And you can’t support one or two browsers because you’ll cut out major portions of the market.
Sunir did a great job on this post, and if you’re interested in getting a solid understanding of the importance of being cross browser compliant, as well as the litany of hurdles between here and there, check out the article.
Copyright © 2000-2010
5:47 pm
[...] was actually fairly common for web apps of 4 years ago not to be cross browser, or cross platform compliant — which [...]
11:03 pm
You left out Firefox 3.1, currently in beta, a much more important release than 3.0 and Firefox 3.2, which is already in alpha development. Firefox 2.0 has already been retired and no longer supported by Mozilla and user base has dropped significantly since Mozilla began migrating them to Firefox 3.0..
Also how can you leave out Mozilla Fennec, which runs the same engine as Firefox 3.1 and by far the most important thing that Mozilla will release in the future.
Safari on Windows is dead, no one will use that crappy Windows port by Apple when Google Chrome runs rings around it and is a much better Webkit based browser overall on Windows.
Drop IE6 support and do not encourage support for IE6, you’re not helping by encouraging people to continue to use that extremely obsolete, oudated, non standards compliant, vulnerable and tremendously painful to develop for browser.
Even Google doesn’t want to support IE6 anymore and they are encouraging people to migrate to much more standards compliant browsers like Firefox 3.0 and Chrome 1.0.
11:50 am
what is the easiest way to export the info in freshbooks to my quickbooks software?
11:59 am
@anthony, Most people just need to export their monthly receivables and payments into QuickBooks, and they do this simply by creating an account in QuickBooks called FreshBooks.
Once a month, enter a journal entry for the total of new invoices that month and another journal entry for the total of new payments.
For more complicated exports, please email me at sunir splat freshbooks.com