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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  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  tags,  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. 

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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.
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