One of the more unpleasant internet facts, and a source of considerable cost during web site development, is that all browsers are different. Even versions of Browsers from the same family can be significantly different.
Serious development dollars are invested daily into forcing browsers to do things that they were never designed to do or just plain don't want to do in any way that makes sense to any normal human being.
If you are interested in some detail this page describes in gory detail our experience in changing from classic 'table-based' layout to a liquid CSS based layout technique for our own web site.
So the first golden rule of web design is - understand the limitations and capabilities of the environment. And understand how is changing and evolving. It's not a static environment.
Design out problems. Don't do what most designers do and design them in. It only adds to costs, causes delays and the site is never really stable.
We still have to handle the gruesome details of what's called 'cross browser' support. Our site still has to run on a bunch of different browsers that we the site designers, owners and operators have absolutely no control over.
Our approach is to mix idealism with pragmatism.
We believe that the ONLY future lies in W3C standards compliance. Our designs are optimised to this end since, ultimately, all browsers will be forced to comply by market pressures. We have extensive knowledge of HTML 4.01, XHTML, XML, CSS2 and the W3C DOM and are continually investing in this knowldege base. That's the 'idealism' part. The most standards compliant browsers are the Gecko/Mozilla family, increasingly the Opera family (from version 7 onward) and even Internet Explorer from Version 7.
The 'pragmatic' part means that we live in the real world. The real world says that Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE) family of browsers have somewhere between 80% and 90% market share. The bad news is that MSIE's W3C standards compliance is at best spotty until Version 7.
There are a number of other browsers and browser families that represent around ~3% of the market and whose standards compliance is more of an oversight than a deliberate policy.
It means this:
We write web pages and Javascript that provide 100% 'look and feel' and 100% functionality to W3C compliant browsers and Microsoft's Internet explorer from version 5.5 onward.
We ensure that the page displays sensibly and that all links are active in all other browsers. This does not mean 100% 'look and feel' or 100% functionality.
It means this:
You get 100% 'look and feel' and 100% functionality for at least 97% of all your sites accesses and a sensible display for the rest.
And you get lower cost development as a consequence.
We maintain web site statistics which include capturing the visiting browser's identification (USER_AGENT) string.
If we find that you have a pathological visitor population we will advise you of the fact and suggest that steps are taken to optimise for the special case.
Unless you advise us otherwise we test sites with the following browsers and serivices (100% in the table below means 100% 'look and feel' and 100% page functionality):
We optimise, and validate, our pages, unless you tell us otherwise, to the HTML 4.01 Transitional standard. We do not think that using XHTML at this time (even 'loose' XHTML) is a cost effective use of resources unless you plan to migrate to an XML based content management system in the immediate future.
Note: When we write pages we use XHTML syntax rules such that conversion to XHTML or XML is not an expensive task should your plans change. To illustrate this point this page is valid XHTML which you may verify by clicking here.
isp support
contacts
security
user mail
webmail+
web hosting
healthy email
isp faqs
SPF Anti-SPAM
Greylisting
web hosting
web sites
portfolio
programming
If you are happy it's OK - but your browser is giving a less than optimal experience on our site. You could, at no charge, upgrade to a W3C STANDARDS COMPLIANT browser such as Firefox
Site
|
Copyright © 1994 - 2024 ZyTrax, Inc. All rights reserved. Legal and Privacy |
site by zytrax hosted by javapipe.com |
web-master at zytrax Page modified: January 20 2022. |
| English |
| French |
