Are You Cross-Browser Compatible?
By Matt Benya
The question of cross browser compatibility is a common
topic among Web developers. Should you or should you not make
your website cross-browser accommodating? The answer is yes
and especially if you are an e-business. As Ripley would say,
"believe it or not" but at the time of this article slightly
more than 20% of Internet users use a browser other than
Internet Explorer. This information comes from W3Schools.com
(http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp),
which has been keeping tabs on browser usage since January
2002.
How Do You Shape Up?
Use of alternative browsers has only been going up, they are no
longer a niche community made up of "techies" and anti-Microsoft
advocates, they are your everyday user, your potential customers.
If you haven't done so already I would suggest that you look at
your website in some of the other common browsers available.
These include:
Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/download.html): This is
currently the top browser after IE6 and it is one of the most
feature rich browsers available today. I would personally
suggest looking into Firefox Mozilla's next generation browser
as apposed to the entire Mozilla suite due to its end user
friendliness and feature rich environment.
Opera (http://www.opera.com/): The Opera browser has been making
its way up the competitive ladder of the browser arena since 2000
when Opera Software ASA released Opera 5. Though it is free to
download and use, if you want to access some of the browser's
features you are required to pay a small registration fee.
Netscape (http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/): Since
Netscape provided the code base for Mozilla in 1998 when they
made the source code for their flag ship product Netscape
Communicator open-source there is little difference between
the two browsers. Still it never hurts to see how things shape
up between the two, and since they are ultimately two different
browsers checking them both is not a bad idea.
Additionally there are programs available that can test your
site for you in different browsers and screen resolutions and
return their findings. One such program is Browser Photo
(http://www.netmechanic.com/browser-index.htm) from NetMechanic.
What Can You Do?
Okay so lets say that our site
www.ihaveanerror.com comes up
with a couple of errors that cause it to render incorrectly when
we look at it in some of the alternative browsers. How are we
going to fix the problem? Well the first thing we want to do is
stay away from any propriety html tags a certain browser type
might offer. These tags will only work properly in the browser
they are designed for and may cause trouble for you in others.
An example of a proprietary tag would be <marquee> in Internet
Explorer.
Another thing you should make a habit of is to validate your
pages through the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3c.org/)
(W3C for short). Founded in 1994 the W3C has made it its
obligation to guide the development of the Web and create a
common basis to build upon. One of the services that the W3C
offers is syntax validation. This is a useful tool when you are
trying to ensure that your visitors will get roughly the same
experience when they visit your site. Validation is easy, select
the language your site was designed in and use their free
validation tools to track down any errors that might occur. If
there is an error in your source code the validation system will
highlight it and provide you with possible solutions for
correcting it.
Why should you conform your site to the World Wide Web
Consortium's guidelines? The answer is that it is these
guidelines that browser developers use as a basis to display
pages on the Web. While browsers like Mozilla conform strictly
to the W3C's guidelines, Internet Explorer is more relaxed. In
fact Internet Explorer will render just about anything you
throw at it. You can leave out the <html> tags, <body> tags, or
forget to close a tag all together and IE will 9 times out of 10
be able to work with what you give it.
Be leery of Microsoft's FrontPage. While Microsoft makes some of
the world's most powerful and end-user friendly applications, in
my opinion, FrontPage has a tendency to do things IE's way. What
I mean when I say this is that FrontPage will overload a web page
with a lot of overhead that is either out of place or incorrect.
If you plan on using an editor of this type consider Adobe's
GoLive, this application at least has the ability to built a
page according to W3C standards and has a built in syntax
checker that can help you ensure your site will meet their
requirements.
The final word, most likely not...
Remember the saying "you can't please everyone"? The same holds
true in the world of Internet browsers. It would be pretty much
impossible to make your site render the same way on each and
every browser available. This, however, is not the goal; the
goal is to make your site useable by the most common browsers
thus reaching the largest audience possible. If something fails
horribly under certain browsers then it is a good time to
rethink your design and find another way to approach the issue.
If your site is known to only work under Internet Explorer and
it is your desire to leave it this way, then it is good practice
to let your visitors know this in advance. They will be much more
likely to switch browsers (if possible) and come back to your
site, if you let them know ahead of time rather than letting
them walk into an unusable page or badly formatted site. Don't
forget presentation is everything.
================================================================
Matt Benya is a co-owner of Primate Studios (www.primatestudios.com)
an independent development house focusing on CGI illustration,
Web design and multimedia. With 20+ years of art experience and
a degree in Network administration Matt is well suited to
translate your needs to the Web.
================================================================
This article was originally published in SiteProNews, one of the
Net's most widely read webmaster newsletters. An online version
of this article and other articles can be found at:
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html
================================================================
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