A Complete Guide to Web Design

6 Chapter 1 – Designing for a Variety of Browsers

Browsers

Web Design in a Nutshell, eMatter Edition

by the larger browsers (such as missing closing tags, improper nesting, etc.) will

not render correctly in Opera.

Opera 3.0 does not support Java, Cascading Style Sheets, or DHTML, although Java

support is promised to be added in version 4.0 (not available as of this printing).

The general public is not likely to flock to Opera, so it may never figure high in

browser usage statistics; however, many designers continue to test their sites in

Opera to make sure their code is clean.

For more information about Opera, seehttp://www.operasoftware.com/.

Lynx

Last, but not least, is Lynx, a freely distributed text-only browser that offers fast,

no-nonsense access to the Web. It has stood proud as the lowest common denom-

inator standard against which web pages can be tested for basic functionality. Lynx

may be a simple browser, but it is not stuck in the past. Lynx is constantly being

improved and updated to include support for tables, forms, even JavaScript!

People do use Lynx, so don’t be surprised if a client demands a Lynx-compliant

site design. Lynx is also important to partially sighted users who browse with Lynx

and a speech device.

The Extremely Lynx page is a good starting point for finding developer informa-

tion for Lynx. You can find it athttp://www.crl.com/~subir/lynx.html.

For information on designing Lynx-friendly pages, seehttp://www.crl.com/~subir/

lynx/author_tips.html.

Browser Usage Statistics

Knowing what browsers are most used can be helpful in deciding which technolo-

gies to adopt and where to draw the line for backwards compatibility. The most

meaningful statistics are those culled from your own site’s usage. Server tracking

software typically breaks down hits according to the browser making the request,

so if you find that only 20% of your visitors are using 4.0 version browsers, for

instance, you might not want to switch your site over to style sheets just yet.

Browser usage resources

There are a few browser statistics sites available on the Web. These sites base their

statistics on hits to their own pages, which skews the data towards users who care

about browser stats—probably not the same section of society using the Web to

research a new car purchase or look up television schedules. BrowserWatch

provides statistics that are meticulously broken down by version, sub-version, and

sub-sub-version for each particular browser.

Because the sampling base is probably not representative of the whole web audi-

ence, the statistics on these pages shouldn’t be considered as absolute fact, just

general guidelines. It’s interesting to see the long scrolls of browsers you’ve never

heard of that make up .1 to .5% of overall site usage.