What is Cross-Browser Compatibility?

Did you know that web pages appear differently in different web browsers and systems?
This becomes a problem for the web site designer…

Why is this a problem?

Each web browser likes to render a web page differently.  So for example, what looks fine in FireFox may look horrible in Internet Explorer.  Although there are web standards, some browser developers don’t follow them.  This is a headache many web designers face.

As if browsers not showing pages correctly is a problem, viewing web pages in different operating systems can be troubling too.  For example, what may look fine in FireFox on a Windows computer, may look different in FireFox on an Apple computer.

How can you solve this?

Until all web browser developers follow W3C web standards, web designers will need to perform cross-browser compatibility testing to ensure that their designs will look and work fine in different browsers and operating systems.  By testing each web page, they can make coding adjustments or hacks (as some like to refer them), to make the pages work perfectly.  This can be a time-consuming task, but quality should be the number one factor in web development.

Resources:

Browsershots - This is an amazing project.  Just enter your url and select which browsers you wish to test your site on.  Browsershots will then post up screenshots of your web site  from different browsers and systems.

Browser Statistics - W3Schools lists monthly web browser statistics on their web site.