No Comments Written by Robert on August 13, 2008 – 3:07 pm

It is imperative that your Web site is viewable to users of all the major Web browsers. A Web browser enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a Web site or local area network. It allows users to easily access information provided through HTML.

Popular Web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox enable Internet users to view and interact with Web sites. Unfortunately, each individual browser does not read HTML code in the same fashion.

In fact, you may design a Web site a certain way and view it in Internet Explorer, only to find out later that it looks much different in Firefox. Because of these potential problems, you should test that your Web site is viewable in all browsers. Fortunately, there are tools available that help make sure your Web site is compatible with multiple browsers.

When you design your Web site, you must make sure that it is viewable to users of all the major Web browsers, including the most recent versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, and Safari. Unfortunately, each individual browser does not read HTML code in the same fashion. It is possible to design a Web site a certain way and view it in Internet Explorer only to find out later that it looks much different in Firefox.

A Web browser enables a user to display and interact with your website

One way to assure that each browser is compatible with your Web site coding is to simply download a version of each browser and test your Web site in each. It is important to know that most of the discrepancies you find are because of the different ways the browsers handle erroneous code.

Try to adhere to the HTML standards found at w3c.org as closely as possible. You can save a lot of time and hassle by dealing with this issue as you design your Web site as opposed to waiting until it is finished. Also, you want to be sure that your Web site is designed with different screen resolutions in mind. If your Web site was designed on a desktop set at 800 x 600 resolution, but the majority of your visitors use 1024 x 768, the Web site will appear different on their monitors.

Test your Web site with your computer’s resolution set to 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. These resolutions are fairly common and should take care of almost all your visitors, including those using widescreen monitors and laptops. Overall, computer users are trending toward higher resolutions, so if you are designing your own Web site, do so with your screen set to 1024 x 768.

Anybrowser.com offers a variety of tools that help you make sure your site is compatible with multiple browsers. The SiteViewer tool eliminates certain HTML programming tags that do not work in all browsers and shows you what your Web site looks like without those tags. Using non universal HTML tags can cause havoc in browsers that do not support those tags. If you can view your site correctly with this tool, you can also be assured that it will display correctly to the majority of your visitors.

Optimize your website for Multiple Browsers

If not, you should try to eliminate the HTML tags that are causing the display problems. Use this tool in conjunction with the AnyBrowser HTML validation tool located at www.anybrowser.com/validateit.html to assist in finding problems.

AnyBrowser also offers a useful Screen Size Test tool at www.anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html. This is a rather simple tool that saves you some time by showing how much of your Web site will show to visitors using various screen resolutions. You can use this tool instead of constantly changing your screen resolution back and forth.