CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-chromesafaricross-browserhtml
wrongusername
wrongusername

Reputation: 18918

Is there a need to test webpages in both Safari and Chrome?

Since both Safari and Chrome use Webkit, is it superfluous to test for compatibility in both browsers if a webpage looks fine in one?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 207

Answers (4)

renrengabas
renrengabas

Reputation: 11

You must test on both browsers, and even across operating systems. Chrome and Safari renders differently, especially if you use custom fonts (via @font-face). I've found that even Chrome renders differently when used in Linux and Windows, while Safari renders differently when on Windows and the iPad.

Upvotes: 1

Mohamed Mansour
Mohamed Mansour

Reputation: 40149

You should definitely test both browsers. Even if they are using WebKit to do the rendering, there are many differences:

  1. Fonts - They render them differently, I would highly recommend FontSquirrel to generate compatible fonts.
  2. Performance - Each one uses different way on how to render the DOM on the screen in terms of technology implementation. Chrome uses Skia (on Linux, Windows), while Mac uses something different. For example, try hiding a DOM of of 200+ children in Chrome vs Safari vs Firefox, you will notice Chrome takes 20+ sec, Safari takes 5+ seconds, Firefox takes less than 1 second. Time of rendering differs, so you must make sure you test that to see what each user experiences.
  3. Features - Couple of HTML5 features differ, they don't have the same feature set.
  4. JavaScript - Some differences as the above users have mentioned, and another example could be key event bubbling differs.

But, they are really similar, layout wise, you don't have to worry much (the fix is really minimal), but it is better to test to eliminate the really odd case.

Hope that helped!

Upvotes: 2

user229044
user229044

Reputation: 239230

You should test both browsers if your site has any significant amount of JavaScript, as there are differences. For example, the following causes a JavaScript error in Safari but not Chrome.

var x = new Date('02-22-2011');

Upvotes: 6

slhck
slhck

Reputation: 38652

No, it is not.

As far as I have experienced, Safari and Chrome (on OS X) seem to render fonts differently. Safari will display fonts without a specified size significantly smaller than in Chrome.

Chrome: enter image description here

Safari: enter image description here

Upvotes: 9

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