Web Design with HTML and CSS

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Why browser testing is important

Web Design with HTML and CSS Digital Classroom

Why browser testing is important

A web browser is a program that renders HTML, CSS, and JavaScript fi les according to a set

of rules built into the application. Although web browser manufacturers use the recommended

guidelines of the Word Wide Web Consortium’s specifi cations for HTML and CSS, they can

interpet these rules as required for their own purposes. Browser manufacturers can also add their

own rules to the specifi cations to add features to their browsers that are not available in others.

Are web pages required to look the same in all browsers?

You can divide the answer to this question into two categories: 1) Technical considerations

and 2) Time/budget considerations.

In the case of technical considerations, you must determine whether you could achieve your

goal of making a web page look the same. For example, the earliest browsers, such as Internet

Explorer 3 or Netscape 3, don’t support cascading style sheets.

For these browsers, you couldn’t apply the CSS layout techniques you learned in the previous

lesson. In the case of time/budget considerations, you might fi nd technical solutions to make

your pages look the same, but if it takes you more time than you have allotted to identify and

fi x the problem you should determine whether the solution is worth it.

Your SmoothieWorld layout in a modern browser (left) versus Netscape Navigator 3 (right).

Attempting to make web pages look the same in multiple browsers is not as important as you

might believe, due to several reasons:

• People browse the web in diff erent ways.


• Monitor resolution. A website on a 17-inch monitor never looks the same as on a
  27-inch monitor.


• Text resizing. Users can override the page layout by increasing or decreasing text size.


• Mobile devices, which represent a growing proportion of web browsers.