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Web Site Design - Browser ConsiderationsA constant source of debate among web designers is how best to deal with older and non-standard browsers and varying screen resolutions. Personally, I feel that the amount of time it takes to tweak a site until it displays perfectly in all browsers is simply not worth the time, effort and expense. So long as it displays well in Internet Explorer Versions 5 and 6, and displays acceptably in other browsers (i.e. is PNRU - Perceivable, Navigable, Readable, Useable), the vast majority of users will be happy). All too often trying to design for alternative browsers simply compromises the design for the vast majority of users and consumes vast amounts of time which would be better spent on developing the website content. Does this mean I am biassed towards Microsoft? Certainly not. I use the fast Firefox and the highly versatile Opera browser for my own browsing far more than Internet Explorer. You will notice if you look down my right hand menu that I recommend them! I am simply being realistic rather than idealistic. I do feel very strongly that user-resizable fonts should be employed - Internet Explorer makes it very difficult for users to resize fonts where fixed-value font sizes are used. Accessibility is a major issue these days. Personally I do not like the trend towards fixed 800 pixel-width layouts as these look very small on higher browser resolutions. My preference is to design a fluid layout which occupies 100% of the available browser window space, and which looks best at 1024 pixel-width - the most popular width to date (May 2005), but which is still acceptable at higher and lower resolutions - especially at 800 pixel-width. But that is my own personal preference. Many designers would disagree! Ideally a site should display well in all four major browser engines - Microsoft IE, Gecko (Netscape, Mozilla Firefox), Opera, Konqueror / Safari, and in earlier as well as later versions of these browsers. However this can be very difficult to acheive, and is not viable for a budget website. It is important, however, to consider who your prospective customers are - if, for example, they work in the music and design industry then there is a good chance they will be using Apple Mac computers and hence the Safari browser (based on the Konqueror rendering engine). If they are technical computer people, it is likely they will be using Firefox. Users of older or alternative browsers are probably used to sites not always displaying perfectly. This is not always a defect in these browsers. In many cases, it is because Internet Explorer is not fully W3C standards-compliant, but all sites need to be, and usually are, built according to the way this browser behaves because of its ubiquity. So long as users of older and non-Microsoft browsers can view the basic information on the page reasonably well, I do not feel that it is necessary to worry too much about stylistic finesse for such users (such as myself!). Opera and Mozilla users are typically more concerned with fast page accesses, security and privacy, the versatility of tabbed browsing and being able to quickly magnify the text in pages for ease of readability, to be worried too much about exact appearances. Netscape, although having been taken over by AOL, is not to date (January 2004) the browser used by AOL. The current AOL browser is really an Internet Explorer adaptation. However when AOL sort out how to embed Netscape optimally within Windows, Netscape users could become quite a large minority and sites will need to take this into account. The latest I have heard (May 2005) is that the new Netscape 8 allows users to switch between the Internet Explorer and Firefox rendering engines - an interesting idea. I am not sure if Netscape 8 still uses its own version of the Gecko rendering engine. |
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Disclaimer: Whilst considerable care is taken in this website to present accurate information, no legal responsibility is taken by the author for the result of following any of the advice or recommendations therein. |
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