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Crossbrowser? OK, you've created a great looking and working page viewed in the popular IE browser. But wait a second... have a look at your page in a Netscape browser... AAAHHH!!! The formatting is off, things are out of place, and your cool drop down doesn't work! What happened? The problem is non-conformity. The world of browsers is a very hard one. There are different browser types, and in those, there are different versions; each of which will view your single web page a bit differently.
There is a huge number of rendering differences depending on which browser you view your web page with. Chances are, there is usually a small quick fix to view things similarly in most browsers. Very basic coding is usually stable in all, but if you go for more "fancy" coding or features, here is where your differences will start to appear. Which one is most popular? From various sources, IE 5.5 seems to be the most used these days. IE 6 has recently been fully released (non-beta) so within the next year it will probably take over. For Netscape users, version 6.1 took a great leap forward and rivals IE, but version 4.x (that x means any number) seems to remain the favorite right now. Netscape 6.01 seemed a bit buggy to upgrade into, so many people stayed with 4.x. Hopefully, that does not hinder their decisions on version 6.1. Many webmasters will test their pages in Netscape 4.x, as it is a very tough browser to satisfy. 4.x has very low tolerance for sloppy coding. So which one do you focus on? If you have a good counter on your site (I use Bravenet), it should show what browser and version your visitors are using. My personal site gets IE5.5 about 95% of the time. Hence, I tend to put in a few extra features geared towards that browser. Since IE5.5 and Netscape6 are very close in compatibility, many features will work in both. This is finally a step towards a common goal in browsers. What about all the other browsers and versions? Netscape viewers are at 4%, and the rest are about 1% of my visitors; so trying to satisfy them all fully would be a rather daunting task with very little reward. Can you satisfy all of these types and versions at the same time? Different browsers and versions may be satisfied through the use of some extensive scripting. You may be able to find what the visitor is using, then have the page load the correct style setting or different web page depending on his browser's requirements. It really depends on your view (or your clients view) if you will be taking on this task or not. It takes a lot of time and effort to make occurrences for each type and version. After that, it takes a lot of testing. Then, if any future editing must be done ... more variations and more testing again. What about WYSIWYG editors? If you are using any form of FrontPage, do not be surprised to see a rather bad view in a Netscape browser. FrontPage is a Microsoft product and will always be making web pages best viewed in an IE browser. The opposite is true if you plan to use Composer by Netscape. Other editors such as Dreamweaver may provide a better result. Since it was not created by a particular browser company, it tends to provide coding more suited to a generalized audience. So what does the future hold? The ideal future will provide a common rendering by any browser type. Whether it is IE or Netscape or any other ... the page will look the same (or very close). Lets hope we don't have to wait for version 10 to come out before this happens Article associated links: http://www.htmlite.com Please note: if you were directed here from another site, visit the main website for JEMS WebDesign or The WebMaster's Desk for additional articles, book reviews, tutorials, design tips, and resources. Copyright © 2001 David Stanley, HTMlite.com. |
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