Make your site cross browser compatible in 5 steps
Making your site cross browser compatible is not easy, but with this tutorial you can make your site cross browser compatible in 5 simple steps.
Step 1: Validate
Lots of bugs are caused by invalid (X)HTML or CSS. If you have your site validated, it will be a lot easier to make it cross browser compatible. Validate your (X)HTML code with the W3C validator and your CSS file with the W3C CSS validator.
Step 2: Check your Website
Now you have to check your website in all browsers. I always check my site in the browsers, I’ve installed on my computer (Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox). Do it and make a note of the bugs.
Of course, checking your website in the browsers installed on your computer is not enough. You have to check the website in different browser versions on different operating systems. The solution is Browsershots.org. With this website you can take full-length screen shots of your website in a lot of browsers. Just type in your url, bookmark the page and come back 20 minutes later to view the screen shots.
Analyse the screen shots and look for bugs. Be sure to write them down.
Step 3: Is it worth my time?
If you notice bugs in very old or uncommon used browsers, ask yourself if it’s worth your time to fix the problems. Look at the browser statistics of w3schools.com, but don’t forget to look to your own stats (I recommend AWstats). If you have one or two visitors every month still browsing with IE5.5, you should really ask yourself if it’s necessary to make the changes.
Step 4: Search the cause
Now you know about the bugs, you’ll have to look for the CSS attribute or HTML code that is causing this problem. This is often obvious. A good reference can be found on westciv.com. There is a complete list of css attributes with their support in different browsers. Too bad Firefox isn’t in the tables.
If you still cannot find the cause of the issue, search for topics on webmaster forums or post a topic yourself, with a screen shot and (a part of) your CSS and HTML code. A forum I visit often is Ozzu.
Step 5: Fix the issues
Now we’re at the essential part of making your website cross browser compatible: fixing the issues. If you know the code that is causing the trouble, find a way to rewrite the code for the specific browser. There are loads of CSS hacks to do that, but I recommend the use of conditional comments. There is an article on 456 Berea St. explaining why you should use conditional comments instead of CSS hacks.
Conditional Comments.
With conditional comments you can link to separate style sheets for all versions of Internet Explorer. A complete reference can be found on quirksmode. For example: