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Making your site Cross-Browser David Dorn looks at one or two bits of HTML that might trip up readers of your site. As much as Microsoft would like you to think that Internet Explorer is all you need to cater for when you’re creating a Web site, that’s not quite the case. In the real world, there a reporbably more browsers than you can shake a stick at, but the following figures may prove interesting: Taken from statistics for April 2002, these show the relative quantities of hits from the various browsers used by visitors to counter-enabled sites:
While it’s obvious that Internet Explorer at version 5 and above has the lion’s share, there’s a very significant proportion of users that don’t use Microsoft’s offering. Different The thing is, each of these browsers handle HTML in a different way – even IE handles HTML differently from version to version, so version 6 specific functions won’t be seen correctly in version 4 or version 3 of the same application – and a Mac version of IE renders pages very differently from a PC version, even of the same version number. What that means for you, as a Web author, is that you need to take into account the relative levels of use of various browsers on your site. If you discover that a lot less than 1% of your visitors use a specific browser, then you may decide that it’s not worth catering for them specifically. The same can be said of a cutoff proportion of around 5% - which is the figure a lot of commercial sites use. In my opinion (probably not so humble), you’re better off coding for 100% of your visitors – that way it doesn’t matter what browser they’re using – they get to see your site in al its glory all the time. Problems While that’s a laudable sentiment, in practice it’s not really possible to do it without causing yourself problems in terms of the look and feel of the site. For instance, take JavaScript. Of all of the readers of Practical PC, there’s actually a small percentage (it amounts to an awful lot less than 1% - closer to 0.01% actually) that have turned off JavaScript functionality in the AOL software altogether. That means that there’s a large chunk of carefully crafted HTML code they’re never going to be able to see. As it happens, it won’t affect the content they see until they get to the JavaScript section of the magazine, at which point they’ll see very little – and obviously none of the examples. Strangely enough, I note that one or two JavaScript incapable browsers do actually go there – although why they do escapes me completely! There are problems with Tables as well – Netscape, for instance, handles tables differently from IE, in that pre version 6 Netscape browsers won’t all ow an empty cell in a table – it must have a character in it, even if it’s just a paragraph marker (the <p> </p> pair). IE, on the other hand, allows an empty cell. If you’ve coded for IE, then, your table won’t work in Netscape, and your page will look awful. What’s the answer? Unfortunately, there’s no one answer, other than to construct a very bland looking site that sticks rigidly to very basic HTML code that’s compatible with every browser known to man. However, when you’re cutting and pasting JavaScript code, look for snippets that are cross-browser, or degrade well when used in a browser other than their intended target. If you’re going to go the degrade route, then only use the JavaScript for something that’s not important to your page (and if you’re going to do that, there’s no real point in using it at all). If you code for Netscape browsers without using Netscape specific extensions, then everything you write will work perfectly well in Microsoft browsers – so that’s one pointer worthy of note. Aside from that, you should check, if possible, that what you’ve authored works as well in Netscape as it does in IE – and it’s a simple matter to have both resident on your PC’s hard disk. It’s what I do all the time, just to be sure that I’m alienating as few visitors as possible.
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