In case you hadn't been paying attention we are in the midst of another round in the Browser War. The Mozilla Foundation just released their latest and greatest version of FireFox yesterday with version 3.0, Opera released version 9.5 last week and Microsoft is in throngs of beta testing IE 8.0, and then there's Apple who has released versions of Safari for both Mac and Windows now.

Once again as developers we are being challenged with browser inconsistencies and ever-evolving standards that make our jobs harder and projects more expensive for you. And, does it really matter what browser you use anyway? The answer is a 100% unqualified "Maybe!" As developers have to make choices it is very probable that something you do doesn't work in FireFox that looks fine in IE, or vice versa.

Our own decidedly unscientific survey shows that FireFox's market penetration is still hovering at around the 15% mark. Is it necessary to put additional resources at 15% of the market? That's a question that's important for you to consider when working on a website redesign. If it is then you need to be sure that you're budgeting time and dollars into that effort. If not, then just remember that when a FireFox fan reaches out to say hello.

-- Mike