Cross – Browser Compatibility
Web Page Mistakes

How does your site look in any of the major browsers? Not everyone is using Internet Explorer to surf the Internet these days.

Are you prepared to loose visitors because your site uses proprietory coding or just doesn’t render properly in all browsers? Can you afford the lost sales?

Is Your Site Cross-Browser Compatible?

Cross-browser compatible

Compatible with all major browsers available

Major browsers available:

• Internet Explorer
• Netscape
• Opera
• Firefox
• Text based browsers for Lynx operating system or the visually impaired

How does your site look in any of the browsers listed above? Not everyone is using Internet Explorer to surf the Internet these days.

Can your website afford to loose visitors because your website is not cross-browser compatible?

Although Internet Explorer is the most used browser Firefox is catching up.

If you take a look at Browser News’ Statistics page you will see the current statistics in browser trends.

Browser News Recommendations are:

“A good way to ensure that sites will work for as many users as possible is to (a) design sites to the HTML, CSS, DOM, and other standards, (b) to test sites with common browsers that implement these standards well, and (c) to tweak the sites so that they work well enough for antique browsers still in common use.”

Reference: Browser News – Browser Trends

So what this means is:

1. Design your website to the standards.

   The web standards are created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

   • HTML 4.01 Specification
   • XHTML 1.0
   • XHTML 1.1
   • CSS 1
   • CSS 2.1
2. Test your website in multiple browsers.

   See the list at the beginning of this post.

3. Build your website so it degrades well.

   Build the website so if someone with one of the older browsers visits the website is not broken.

Cross-Browser Compatibility continued

Update:  On October 18, 2006 Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 which implemented some changes to bring this browser more in line with being standards compliant.

January 5, 2009

“…Though IE still has a commanding lead in the browser market, 2009 should see continued growth for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (though Chrome could slow down the growth of other alternative browsers once it has extensions). Internet Explorer, meanwhile, is expected to continue its decline. As browser parity nears (at least in terms of user reach), cross browser and cross platform functionality is becoming more and more important….

SitePoint

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This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 11:28 am and is filed under Cross - Browser Compatible . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.