Web Design with HTML and CSS

Why browser testing is important

Lesson 9, Browser Compatibility 197

Who demands that pages look the same or is it something else when there are such inherent

diff erences? Sometimes, it’s designers with previous experience in the world of print design,

because they are used to a single version of their work and might attempt to duplicate this

experience with their site. Client expectations are often a factor as well, because clients are

quite often less technically oriented than the web designer, so it becomes important for the

designer to communicate exactly what will be delivered as well as the options.

Choose the level of browser support you want

The level of browser use partially accounts for your decision to support it. For example, you

might fi nd evidence that only 0.5 percent of all global browsers are Netscape Navigator 3, so

you would decide not to spend much time designing for it.

The choice of which browsers to support becomes more diffi cult with more recent browsers.

A good example is Internet Explorer 6. This browser was released in 2001, making it

approximately 10 years old upon the publication of this book, yet it still remains a relatively

popular browser. There are a number of reasons for this: Internet Explorer 6 was at one point

the most popular browser in the world; some estimates gave it a market share of 80-90%.

Many websites were designed with IE6 as the standard; in some cases, features found in the

browser were tied directly into the functionality of the site.

Examples of Microsoft-specifi c features include DHTML extensions, ActiveX controls, and

proprietary JavaScript.

As a designer, this could have an impact on your work. Recent estimates put the worldwide
market share of Internet Explorer 6 between 15 and 20%; however, this number is hard to
verify, and the incidence of IE6 amongst your client’s target audience could be signifi cantly
higher. This scenario is not unusual, many corporate environments still use a combination
of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. If your job is to redesign or add to a company’s
intranet (an internal website not accessible to the public), you would be targeting an
audience that mostly uses IE6.