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Check Your Web Design For Browser Compatibility
Friday, October 13. 2006, 10:27 AM
If you have a web, one of the most important thing to do, is to have a good web design. Your web design is your first impression to your visitors, if your web design is pretty and clean, then you may have a higher chance to lure the visitors to read your entries. Having a pretty web design in one thing, but having a clean web design, clean from problems with different web browser (especially the major ones,IE and Firefox) is another thing. In this article, i wanna touch about web design compatibility with different web browsers - by sharing with you a problem i had with my design and how did i solve it. Personally, i think this is the part of web design that most webmasters take for granted. Tyme, from 9rules, has even posted an entry emphasizing the importance of this browser compatibility thingy.
A few weeks back, one of my visitors contacted me, informing me about a problem with my blog's layout, some of my images are out of position. This was both a surprise and an embarrassing news. I can't believe that my site has been running for weeks with a flawed layout, and hundreds of people saw it. Determined to fix the flaw, i took some steps to debug my blog's layout.. The first step i took is to find the flaw. I usually test my design in Firefox 1.5,Opera 9.0 and IE 7, since i didn't notice any flaw in this three type and version of browsers, i went seeking for help using a cool 'Browser Compatibility Check Tool'.
Browser Compatibility Check
It is actually a website providing a service to make screenshots of your web when viewed using different types and versions of browsers. All you need to do is go to the website using this link : Check For Browser Compatibility , then type you website's URL and press the 'Start' button. After that, you will be given the option to choose which type of browsers that you would want your website to be screenshot with. There are also some other customization that you may wanna try such as different Screen Resolutions and Javascript versions. Just a tip from a guy who uses this service frequently: if you wanna check screenshots of your web in many web browsers, please set the waiting time longer, the longer you set it, the higher the chance to get screenshots in all browsers that you chose. When you are done, just press the button 'Submit Job' and wait !!. (you probably wanna bookmark the site after you have submitted the job, so you can comeback later to view the screenshots)
So, back to the story, after i have viewed all of the screenshots, i found that i had problems with IE 6 and IE 5.5 (who doesn't??). Now that i know what and where the problem lies, i start to meditate, recalling all of my scattered knowledge of html, then started to try fixing the damn layout mess. I began with full confidence that i could fix this thing with my level 1 out of 100 html skill, but after a few hours of debugging and cursing and punching the table - i was still at the same place i started - no progress made at all !!(other than finally realizing that i am really bad at html).
Getting Help
Not wanting to give up, i approached my mentors and asked for some advice, you may do the same at : The HTML Forum . I posted about my problem on one the threads there, together with all the details such as the nature of the problem (in my case, the images are out of position), screenshots of the flawed layout (you just need to give the link of the screenshot) and type and version of the browser that i am having problem with. It is very important to include these details, as it can make the job of the Gurus easier to find a solution to the problem. Another tip from me: don't be afraid to post your problem in the forum, the guys there are a bunch of nice people - they really wanna help, will not judge you and really put an effort to find the solution.
Finally, with the help of a few guys from The HTML Forum, i managed to fix the layout problem which not only results a better looking blog but also gives me the really needed satisfaction of debugging and also my sanity back !! .
The End
I really hope that this article will be beneficial for you guys out there who are experiencing bugs in your web designs :-) and also to people who wanna check their web designs compatibility. Making sure your web design is compatible with all major web browsers is very important, as it shows that you are concerned about users that are using different type of browsers, other than the one you favor. If you only optimize your web design for only, lets say Firefox, than you will loose a lot of IE audience. Though undoubtedly IE is a pain in the ass, but you shouldn't let the users to suffer from it's incompetence (i am referring to IE 6 and below). So, if you haven't check your design for browser compatibility, that i really suggest you do it soon :)
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