John McSweeney
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May 16, 2008, 10:45 am
Website Design
Browsers
Some mention should be made about cross-browser and cross-platform compatability. Although modern browsers display web content far more consistently than in the past, differences in how "standards" for the Web are implemented persist, not only from browser to browser, but also from to platform to platform (Windows, Mac, Linux etc.).
Needless to say, Microsoft dominate the market with Internet Explorer and Windows. Without wishing to be controversial, designing for IE on Windows should take priority, since this combination will be employed by most users. Exceptions of course exist. For example, an intranet may restrict users to some other browser. There are, however, a number of browsers finding increasing popularity, particularly amongst those with a keen interest in the Web. As far as operating systems are concerned, I design on a Windows PC. End of story, although as a minor footnote, I occasionally ask someone to check out my website on a Mac.
I design my pages for IE (currently version 6) and check them on a number of other browsers. These are:
- Netscape (7.02)
- Firefox - English Version 2 from Mozilla is currently available.
- Opera - A free download is available, although you will have to accept advertising if you decide not to buy a copy.
Consequently I can account for the vast majority of viewers to any of my pages.
Note: It is possible, particularly in the OU, that a small number of users may be employing a text browser, such as Lynx. It is worth considering when designing with tables, since Lynx will not display text placed in a table.
Some designers spend an eternity ensuring identical displays in all browsers. I consider that life is far too short for such niceties and adopt a more relaxed approach. Compromise is the order of the day, but a reasonably similar appearance in these browsers should be a designer's aim.
To achieve this, a number of strategies can be adopted. JavaScript programmers may develop browser detection code, a "sniffer", and run an appropriate script in response to that test.
I use CSS to cover a multitude of possibilities. I will be discussing this later, but suffice to say that if one searches hard enough, a solution to a problem already exists. There is certainly no need to "re-invent the wheel". Scripts are freely available and, when discussing CSS, I will point to the ones I reused for this site.
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