Web Browsers for Photographers July 2009

Last updated July 01, 2009

What’s the best browser to view this site (and others)?

For photographers, the best possible display means using a browser that scales images properly and recognizes the color space of an image. As of this writing, there are two solid mainstream choices available:

  • Apple’s Safari — fast with a great feature set (Windows and Mac);
  • Mozilla Firefox — fast with a great feature set, including plugins.

Download and install both of these browsers. You can have both installed, and each has interesting features— both are excellent choices and there is no reason not to keep both installed and use both.

Avoid IE

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is not a good choice— any version. It scales graphics poorly, and has a number of display problems that give web developers fits.

Consider the two images below. the one at left was prepared to fit. The one at right is being scaled down from a larger size.

giraffe arched neck giraffe arched neck

Image at left is unscaled, but the one at left is being scaled by the browser. Are they both the same quality?

See also

DAP

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