Why does my web site look OK in one browser and not in another?

As a user, I have three preferred browsers and the one I use at any particular time depends on what I'm doing on the Internet.

I use:

• Firefox for security
• Chrome for speed
• Internet Explorer because its popular!

Almost every web site will look different in all three browsers - but why?!

A web site isn't just words and pictures: it includes programs (javascript, php, flash etc.) that allow it to be interactive and it has styles (how the content etc. should appear). Each browser's job is to take the content, program and style information and correctly interpret it so that it appears the way the designer intended. Each browser does this differently.

As a designer I have to follow the rules and conventions to produce a site that is 'compliant'. Unfortunately, even if we produce a perfect site, not all browsers ARE!! In particular, the most popular (IE) is the worst! Version 6 was awful!! but V8 is better and V9 (out soon) better still.

Sometimes the differences are major (some important feature simply won't work) but most of the time they are minor display issues. Unfortunately, these can make your beautiful and slick site look like it has been thrown together. How much time and effort you need to put into fixing it depends on the severity of the problem and how much time and/or money you have!

If the browsers can get a perfect site wrong then you've no chance if you have errors in your code! I design sites to work with the compliant web browsers and then 'fix' them to work with IE.

Web Design