[ Article ] Browser Compatibility

[army]

Browser Compatibility

Internet Explorer, created by microsoft has been the most popular web browser for many years. But the gap is shrinking with the release of Mozilla Firefox, by an open source community.

At the last count it is said that there are 64 million firefox users on the internet. Growing in massive numbers by the day.

So, the issue with browser compatibility is at its highest importance. The way browsers are constructed, they can show a webpage slightly differently.

For instance, the IFRAME tag shows perfectly in Internet Explorer but does not show in Firefox. This is only one of many instances of none browser compatibility.

Therefore, webmasters should be making sure their web page is viewable in both internet explorer and firefox equally. If it doesnt, then they risk loosing a large percentage of web users. There is nothing worse than surfing a web site and not being able to see it properly in a particular browser.

The solution for webmasters is to make all their pages XHTML transitional. Web sites that validate to this, have a higher chance of being viewed correctly in all major browsers.

XHTML is the next generation web language, and is said to replace HTML eventually. XHTML was released in January 2000.

XHTML is not a difficult language to learn, it is basically identical to HTML but the main difference is that tags in XHTML always have an end tag.

For example, a IMG SRC tag in HTML has no end tag. In XHTML the IMG SRC tag has the end tag of />

More information on learning XHTML can be found at
http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_intro.asp

Once you have constructed your XHTML web page then you can validate it at
http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_validate.asp

Further, to ensure near complete browser compatibility you can validate any stylesheet here : http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[atrocious]

Yes, I agree that a browser compability is a very important issue. I have a website (a phpbb forum actually) and I bet that it is not compatible in all the browsers. I tried checking my site in in the css-validator and my stylesheet had a lot of errors and I have no idea how to fix all of them. I have installed a lot of addons for my phpnuke forum and that must be the reason why my stylesheet had that many errors.

I also use a javascript navigation panel provided by dynamicdrive and it works fine in internet explorer. But in firefox all the subcategories of the menu are shown at once and in opera browser the navigation panel is such a mess that it is not at all usable. But most of my visitors use internet explorer and I have never received a complaint about my site not working properly in the browser of my visitors. I have plans to fix these problems.

[_cdotech_]

That's so true.. being a webmaster myself, I am faced with such issues. I sometimes have to settle for having them look as similar as possible but still not completely the same. Being XHTML compliant is a good thing, I also try to check my designs on all browsers using this site here just to make sure before I launch them.

[Blasphemy]

The problem of non-compatability is often caused by IE not adhering to CSS standards. This can be a big issue. To fix it, try either sticking something on your site telling users it may not run in IE and that they should get FF (by the way, you get paid when users download firefox), which may ease it up a bit. Or, make sure that all the CSS you use is supported by both browsers.

If IE was ANSI complient, compatability wouldn't be so big of an issue...*mutters at MS*

[Aniket]

I always advice my users to use Mozilla Firefox ,as i have mozilla firefox and it is the first browser i test my sites on , plus i am an ardent supporter of open source,if you allow only INTERNET EXPLORER to view your web pages then it will
have a huge problem as you will loose out many who use OPERA,Linux Browsers and Mozilla/Gecko based browsers so it is best to stick to open standards of the
W3c and you shall not have any problem
Plus Internet explorer seven too recognizes PNG( transparencies)as they should be, so they too are going mozilla way of following open standards

[Arleigh]

Nice article. Very interesting and useful to read.

Checking your site compatibility to all major browsers will help to achieve a well-designed website. If the site does not provide compatibility to a particular browser , its overall design will be affected, giving it an unpleasant appearance on the screen. In that case, a visitor will become annoyed to your site and find another better site that can provide him more resources.