Which reference browser should I use for developing a new website?

I'm unsure which browser is the best for a web development. I know that Firefox is the most favoured for the common but it also does tolerate programming failures, so it is not 100% strict.

With what browser should I develop my website to have the bes开发者_运维问答t result on all other browsers, so I don't have to fix too much in the CSS?

From personal experience. I use chrome. For me 100% fine on chrome is like 70% on IE, so I switch between the two a lot.

Chrome 100% = 98% FF , 99.9% Safari and 70% IE.

This is what I've noticed from my experience.

I personally use Chrome, as its built-in developer tools work great, and it has the widest HTML5 support. However, that's not necessarily a good thing because even if your website works 100% with the better browsers, it will probably break with IE.

If you need your website to work with IE, you should constantly test with it. Use the lowest common denominator.

At this point, all of the major browsers implement a lot of CSS3 features a little differently (box-shadow vs -moz-box-shadow vs -webkit-box-shadow for instance). Honestly, your best bet is to use IE, Opera, Firefox and Chrome (I'm pretty sure Safari and Chrome both run off of webkit, so they should be the same). As for what to use as your primary browser, it all depends on what you're looking for really. I enjoy using Chrome, but others swear by Firefox (I find it too clunky).

Now as for older browser support, well that's just an entirely different discussion ;)

Simple answer, all the major ones.

When you develop for the web it's best to think from the view point of the user viewing the site. The main issue is that each browser will render a webpage a little different and that is the main problem you need to solve.

To help with this issue, you'll need to work with some cross-browser rending web-apps such as http://browsershots.org/

To more directly answer your question, I'd go with Chrome with Firebug. Asides from that, you should be able to create CSS browser-compliant sites with practice.

Good luck!

Develop in the browser of YOUR choice with the best development tools for YOU (e.g. Firebug, FirePHP in FF or the Developer Tools for Chrome). Try to use standard, crossbrowser compatible framworks for JS, CSS and available templates for HTML like "Boilerplate" HTML 5. And then test everything continously on the mainstream browsers (IE, FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari).

This way you won't waste your time afterwards fixing browser specific bugs...

I prefer using Firefox, simply because there are so many useful tools for it - Firebug, Web Developer's Toolbar and so on - but really it doesn't matter as long as it's not Internet Explorer.

This is because IE has so many quirks that it's best to get it right in all other browsers, then worry about adding workarounds or other fixes to make it look right in IE (getting things right in IE can take a very long time).