Based on my interactions with web-savvy individuals, it's quite clear to me that sometimes our preferences for tools like web browsers can seem as strong as those for religious and political convictions. As a designer of web applications, I try to set my own browser preferences aside and to design for a wide, inclusive web community.

w3schools.com—a website for web technology tutorials and references—provides browser usage statistics for visits to its site over much of the past decade. While their visitor population does not accurately reflect the web community at large, we can glean something interesting from these statistics: browser usage is more diverse now than it has been in many years. A sizable portion of the web community uses Firefox, recent flavors of Internet Explorer, Google's Chrome, and Apple's Safari.

Unfortunately, each of these browsers varies in the way they render content. These differences, sometimes subtle and difficult to find, can be maddening for web designers like myself who want everything on a web page to look and act consistently for users. Thankfully, we're seeing a movement from browser developers toward widespread adoption of web standards (e.g., HTML/CSS rendering, JavaScript and Ajax support). Browsers that follow community-developed standards in these areas help me maintain my own sanity on the job.

As a web user, one thing you can do is try to use browsers that are as standards-compliant as possible, realizing that your use of such browsers makes it easier for web designers to create well-crafted, engaging web experiences consistently across platforms. Furthermore, by “voting with your browser,” you can cast your preference to make the web as accessible and open as possible. At the same time, we'll do our part to create web-based learning experiences free of arbitrary, restricting, or inconvenient technical requirements.