Vibe New Media - Bournemouth Web & Graphic Design Agency

What you see is not what you always get!

If life was simple, every computer would use just one operating system and one web-browser to view all websites. Of course the real world isn’t like that.

The increasing uptake of broadband has fueled the demand for more sophisticated looking websites. We are now asked to prepare final artwork for websites that would not embarrass the front cover of a glossy magazine.

Creating stylish artwork for a web-page is one thing. Making sure it always appears as intended on all the possible web browsers in current use is quite another.

The W3 Consortium (W3C) is the governing body that sets standards for web developers. One of their main functions is to publish strict guidelines on how code instructions should be written and interpreted by browsers to encourage cross compatibility.

Unfortunately, only the web browsers released in the last two years adhere to the W3C standards, and some more so than others.

This means there are a significant number of users using older web-browsers that won't be able to render W3C-compliant websites as they were intended to be seen on the screen.

The Internet is therefore going through an awkward transitional phase that is expected to last at least a few years more. Until most of the older, non-compliant web-browsers have been replaced, clients must decide which of the web-browsers their website will work with.

The law of diminishing returns certainly applies here. It is relatively easy to produce websites that will be compatible with 95% of current web browsers. To increase that to 99% can add significantly to the cost of production.

The following table reproduces the current market share of the top web browsers:

Internet Explorer 7   19.19
Internet Explorer 6    47.01%
Firefox / Mozilla    24.35%
Safari 2.0    1.76%

The compatability issue is further complicated by the mix of operating systems in use:

Windows Vista 3.46%
Windows XP    83.48%
Windows 2000    3.94%
Windows 98    1.34%
Mac OS    3.73%

You would be correct in expecting that the older the operating system, the more likely there will be problems with browser compatibility issues.

It might be tempting to dismiss a 1% market share as being fairly insignificant, but it should be remembered that in real terms it can represent millions of users. If your target market predominantly uses older Macs with Internet Explorer 5, and your new website is written to the current W3 standards, then the very people you want to impress with your new website won't even be able to view it properly. Definitely not the best way of going about winning new business!

So what does the lack of universal web-browser compatibility mean to you?

Simply put, you have a choice to make.

You could just elect to have your new website written to conform to the latest W3C’s latest standards that will mean only recently released web browsers will be able to correctly display your website as intended?

The alternative is to include additional functionality in the new website that can detect which web browser is being used and only call up compatible code for that browser. This is not as difficult as it may seem, but it does significantly add to the coding time it takes to complete a website. Essentially the coder is writing several sets of formatting instructions to cover all the different ways each web browser interprets the content of the website. The longer the development time, the higher the costs.

Not surprisingly, most of our clients prefer to constrain costs and settle for their new website just working properly on IE6, IE 5(PC), Firefox, Mozilla and Safari. This mix gives you the best chance of ensuring your website appears as intended on well over 95% of the World’s PC and Mac screens.

To some extent the choice you face over web browser compatibility will be made for you, if you accept our recommendation that your new website should be written using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as the method of choice for managing web page layout.

The most important advantage of CSS layout is that it gives web designers precision control over how both text and images will appear on the final web page. It also separates formatting code from raw XHTML, which can make upgrading and updating content much simpler in the future.

Writing CSS in a certain way also makes it much easier for disabled people to access the content of your website. Ensuring accessibility is now a legal requirement for all UK website operators.

The fact that the text content is separated from the code facilitates more efficient scanning of your website by the search engines. CSS can make quite dramatic improvements to your rankings in the top search engines.

The one significant downside with CSS layout coding is that it is only fully compatible with the current versions of Firefox, Mozilla and Safari. It can easily be made to work with Internet Explorer 6 and the PC version of Internet Explorer 5. It is not compatible, however, with the Mac version of Internet Explorer 5 or older versions of other web browsers.

You can therefore begin to appreciate some of the problems that confront us at the moment. Do you write a website conforming to the recommended standards that may not appear on some screens as intended? Or do we deliberately 'dumb-down' your code so that it will work with older browsers but fail on accessibility and other similar issues?

The good news is that both Microsoft and Apple are committed to writing future versions of their web browsers that will be fully W3C compliant. It is just a case of waiting until they become available and then the whole problem will go away.

Vibe New Media: Bournemouth Web Design

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What you see is not what you always get!

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