I have a Website which has a disclaimer which says that this web site is best viewed on IE7, 8 & 9, Firefox 12,13 and 14, Chrome 18, 19 & 20.
This disclaimer was put many months back.
But, new versions of Chrome and Firefox gets updated on User’s system if auto-update is enabled.
Till now, whatever latest version of Chrome (CH 23) and Firefox (FF 17) that User’s are using, my web site is supporting in terms of CSS and alignments. A day might come when a particular browser version will be released in which they internally update something and that might affect my CSS, Ajax calls etc. Am particularly bothered about look and feel.
How to find out beforehand if the Browser version which is getting released will start showing up my site properly. And that I dont have to start making any code changes.
For eg., IE10 is released and I had not targeted this during development. What parameters I need to check to make sure that I dont have to do any code changes.
First, the whole “best viewed in” thing is a throwback to the past when different browsers had substantial differences in how they rendered HTML, it’s essentially pointless if you’re developing properly these days.
Second, it’s rare where a newer version of a browser will break display functionality of a normal website, I’ve seen it happen with some games and the newer versions of Chrome, but never a normal site. Browsers generally move forward in their display abilities but never at the expense of previous versions. You can still build a website with frames, tables and HTML font tags and it will still display properly so honestly I think you’re worrying unnecessarily about something that isn’t likely to happen.
That being said, Chrome has their Canary browser, which is their development version of Chrome with the latest toys and tweaks, IE will usually release preview versions of their browsers before going public as they did with IE10, not positive about Firefox or Safari but a quick Google should help you there.
Do keep in mind that developing for unreleased versions of browsers is a horrendously bad idea. They can change before release breaking what you’ve done. Make sure your code is clean and error free and works on current browsers and the chances a new browser release will break that code ranges between slim and none and is a lot closer to the none end of the spectrum.