Ensure Your Website's Cross Browser CompatibilityPosted by Bowden McKinney on May 17th, 2021 I was recently contracted to edit a clients existing site, an extremely professional looking site which probably didn't come cheap. Beautiful graphics, effective in its marketing concept and powerful at conveying messages. However the first thing I noticed when the page loaded was a misplaced graphic. The issue was in the code, Firefox was having some trouble reading it. Additional hints checked in WEB BROWSER, sure enough, it had been fine. Seems the designer worked in Internet Explorer and hadn't checked they layout in other browsers. Because the client also uses IE, neither of these knew about the design flaw... but also for 46% of the net viewing population, they were seeing this as their first impression. It is important to check for cross browser compatibility which means that your sites design, and much more importantly, your message isn't lost in browser translation. For designers, developers and webmasters, it's assumed by your client that your job will undoubtedly be done professionally and their site will work for everyone. Here are four steps to make sure that your website is cross browser compatible. 1. Use Clean Valid Code Whether utilizing a template or creating your personal design, I cant stress the importance of clean, valid code. When your code is valid, a browser knows how to proceed with it. Cleaner code helps se's crawl through your information more easily, and gives your visitors an improved 'as-intended', faster loading experience. For template users, search for a reference to HTML/CSS validity. For code writers, check w3schools for mention of valid code. If you eventually opt to work with a piece of invalid code, understand the goal of that code, then check and check, in multiple browsers, that it's not messing up your pages. 2. Validate HTML/XHTML Run your website through W3's HTML Validator. When I started writing code, my pages would keep coming back with hundreds of errors. Validation could be a long, arduous process. read more start with good code can help avoid major headaches (for you and your clients). It can be tricky to find errors in code. The Validator reports each error by line number. The specific type of code the error is on is sometimes hard to find, and will become even harder when working with PHP software (such as a WordPress theme) that pull pages together from separate files. In the event that you proceed through errors with patience, I really believe anyone with basic html knowledge can get through validation with just a little practice. Don't Give Up. 3. Validate CSS Next, run your site though the CSS Validator. This tests for CSS level 2.1. CSS3 is available and employed in many browsers. Obviously CSS3 won't validate here , but Personally, i feel that its Not a good enough reason to ditch CSS3. Just be sure to sign in your browsers to see if it works as intended. 4. Check with BrowserShots.org Most users have either Firefox or Internet Explorer on their local machine so its an easy task to test your designs. But what about each of the other browsers available? Thanks to BrowserShots.org, you don't need to install every browser to know what your site appears like. Check the browsers you would like to test from their list, allow site do its job, and they're going to take a screenshot and demonstrate how your pages look in each browser. Be patient, it requires a while to provide your screenshots.Like it? Share it! More by this author |