One of the little known plagues of web designers everywhere is browser compatibility. When you view a website on your computer you take for granted that the website will look the same no matter what computer, browser, platform, etc. that you view it in, right? Wrong. There are many variables involved in how a website will appear on your screen. Screen resolution (the size of your monitor), computer updates, browser type, browser updates…all of these things and more determine the appearance of any given website. As web designers we are faced with the challenge of not only creating for you the perfect website to best showcase your company, portfolio or extensive rock collection, but we must do so in a way that will allow an immense range of viewers to see it. Undoubtedly, the biggest obstacle in achieving this is browser variations.
The browser world today is largely dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Following these two top-dogs are Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, Opera and more. Not only is each of these browsers unique in their treatment and display of web pages, but each browser is constantly being updated and changed. This means that while your site is up and running smoothly in Firefox 3.6, it will not necessarily be working in Firefox 2.0. Internet Explorer (IE) is itself a huge obstacle for designers. It is the most widely used browser (50-60% of the market) and up until the recent release of version 8.0 it has had some major flaws. IE8 follows web standards guidelines much closer than previous versions. Web standards are formal and technical standards that are the approved best practices of web design. It is important that there be a recognized method for reading and writing websites, otherwise a universal audience would be unattainable without coding a single website multiple times.
Past versions of Internet Explorer did not closely follow web standards and necessitated the use of Conditional Comments to “hack” code for IE. Conditional comments are a part of a websites code that speak only to the IE browser. You can specify any or all versions of IE while writing conditional comments; often different conditional comments will be needed for different versions of the browser. Essentially this means that after I have written the code for a website that is web standards compliant and works in most browsers, I have to then re-write the code for various versions of IE. The process adds a good amount of time and effort into each website that I create using HTML and CSS coding.
The good news for designers is that IE8 is standards compliant and makes creating a web page a more reasonable process. This is useless, however, if viewers are still using older versions of the browser. IE7 was a step in the right direction and needs only minimal adjustments to show a website properly. IE6, on the other hand, is another story. The Wikipedia entry on IE6 states the following:
This version of Internet Explorer is widely derided for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in “worst tech products of all time” lists, with some publications labeling it as the “least secure software on the planet.” Campaigns have been established to encourage users to upgrade to newer versions of Internet Explorer or switch to different browsers, and some websites have dropped support for IE6 entirely.
IE6 ignores a plethora of web standards, and yet as of January 2010 it was being used by more than 20% of all internet users (the newer IE7 accounts for only 14%). This is a huge number for designers- a website that is “broken” to 20% of viewers is not acceptable. The main reason that this recognizably poor browser ever rose to popularity is that it came standard with Windows XP, a popular operating system for some time. Windows Vista, which was much less successful, offered IE7. One of the biggest reasons that IE6 has maintained such a large presence is large corporations that do not want to invest in browser upgrades. While it is free to update the browser itself, large company IT departments have standardized to comply with the older browser and an upgrade could be costly.
One of the tools web designers use to test web pages in different browsers are websites like browsershots.org, which allow you to preview screen shots of a web page in different browsers. Also helpful is the recent news that as of March 1, 2010, Google will no longer support IE6. Ideally the dropped support will encourage some users of the browser to update. And now, I will now do my part and ask the 6.75% of my viewers using IE6 (and the 17% using IE7), to please update your browser, and enjoy the web as it was meant to be seen.