Mac and Windows?

[savantcreative]

I own an advertising agency/marketing consulting firm and can't seem to not fight the old fight of needing to go with both Mac and Windows. Mac is my preferred environment for many reasons, but when it comes to web design, it just seems like it is more practical to design sites on a PC because the majority views them this way. Of course, we still cross test on our Macs. What do you all think?

 

[Strukt]

I code my site entirely using OS X (URL in signature). And i use the application called “Coda” to code the site.

If you code and design according to the HTML or XHTML / CSS standards it should not matter at all if you are making the site on a PC with Windows, Linux or OSX. In my opinion. It is just a matter of taste.

 

[savantcreative]

It's more about the browsers on the Windows platform. That is my reasoning.

 

[mynameis]

Why not just have some of each? People can use what they prefer when designing then the you can test on both after design.

 

[kahlil88]

I don't see how the Windows world has any sort of advantage as far as web authoring is concerned. The operating system is completely irrelevant - the look of a web page depends on the browser, and anyone with common sense should be using something standards-compliant like Firefox, which is cross-platform. I primarily use GNU/Linux, and I create my web pages with a plain text editor (with syntax highlighting for easy reading). When I use Mac OS X, I edit my pages with Bean.

 

[mynameis]

anyone with common sense should be using something standards-compliant like Firefox

You can call them idiots if you like but the IE users are still a majority and with that a huge group of potential customers that you shouldn't ignore.

 

[macwannabe]

IE is garbage.. i am on my Dell right now in safari... i have it so you have to go into all programs to get to IE... it never gets used on my comp..

 

[ki99]

it's lovely that you guys want to argue about browsers and what not, but when it comes down to it, a HUGE percentage of the market still uses internet explorer, because that's what their computer comes with. you can say it sucks, but that's how it is.
i think that the operating system you do the coding on is highly irrelivent, and you can get almost every browser for most systems, except, unfortunetely, Internet Explorer. So IMO, the best way to go about this is too design the site using which ever OS you prefer, then when you're finished, test and trouble shoot on as many browsers as you can to make sure they all look the same.
the top ones you want to check are:
Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 6 (definitely make sure you check it on 6, there is a lot of bugs in 6 that trip up a lot of coders and i believe this is still VERY widely used because of Windows XP)
Safari
Firefox (if possible, for right now, i would try and test under v2, and v3)
and Opera

EDIT:
side note* this is only my own list for what i believe are the top browsers in the world, if you can test more definitely do, and try and keep up to date on the most popular browsers and always make sure to test your sites on them.

 

[iMac-Knight]

The best browser, is always the one that works best for you. Some web pages look better on one or another, but there will always be a browser that works well for you. Mine, when I was on a PC, was IE for the sake of viewing most pages. On the Mac, Safari was worked best. Opera right behind it for the Mac.

 

[kahlil88]

Internet Exploder does have the most marketshare, but the next version is supposed to be standards-compliant by default, so if it looks good in Firefox, it ought to look about the same in IE8

 

[bobdaspider]

Being a 'mac' forum, I think it is reasonably safe to say that most people here prefer using and working with Macs. That's the good news. The bad news is that most people will be viewing your site on a PC running Windows, and probably using either IE6 or IE7. It is also my experience that more 3rd party software and apps are now available for PC's than for Macs (eg. 3rd party Flash software). That said, the site that I'm currently working on (using a Mac) looks identical in both Firefox and Safari on a Mac to that on a PC in both Firefox and IE7 (nb. some issues re CSS text with IE6 though).

Therefore, whether you create your site on a Mac or a PC, won't really affect what it will look like once posted online (based on my experience anyway).

^o^

PS. Keep the faith

 

[xstep]

Since you are testing on a Mac, the Mac may have a slight advantage over the other platforms. You can use one machine to run all of the operating systems you are likely to test against by using a Virtual Machine. Sun even has a free one available called VirtualBox.

Beyond that little tidbit, I don't think using one operating system over another for web development has any real advantage. It will come down to what the developer is more comfortable with.

You might argue that you start coding the hacks sooner with Windows as you see the IE problems earlier, but you are going to have do those hacks anyway. My preference would be to code to the more standards compliant browsers up front, then code the IE hacks after I'm happy with my standards code.

Note that some sites have recently mentioned they are beginning to drop support for IE 6. This is a tricky decision but not a new one as sites have dropped support for older browsers many times. You need to know your sites browser client stats to know if this makes sense for you.

 

[Thyamine]

If you prefer OS X, and you are only using the Windows boxes to test the site look and functionality in, you could get away with using VMWare to run a virtual PC and test that way. You could even run IE in Unity mode so that you could have Windows IE, OS X Safari, etc all next to each other to compare what may not look the same.

As far as coding, it probably makes less of a difference, unless you are using .Net or something along those lines. I'm not sure that anything compares to Visual Studio for working/coding with .Net, in which case you'd be better off running that in Windows. Otherwise I would think that other web development would be a matter of system preference of the user.