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Designing your Web Site for ALL Browsers by: David Bell Let's face it. Building a web site that browses consistently on multiple platforms and multiple browsers is not always as easy as we would like. It is safe to say that most designers spend most of their time building their sites on a given platform. Those with the highest standards should, upon completion, take a look at their creation in different browsers and different platforms. Sure, you could see how it looks in Window 98 with Internet Explorer and let that be good enough, but do you really want to risk a bad web experience for millions and millions of potential visitors? Consider this.... A recent statistic I saw reported that 12% of internet users were Macintosh users. Ignoring this fact is like creating a catalog that can only be optimally viewed by one in eight of your customers.Furthermore, not all of the Windows users are using Windows 98. Windows 95 continues to be widely used, and Windows 2000 and NT represent a significant percentage of visitors. It would be remiss to ignore the small, but growing contingency of Linux users. Though small in number at this time, the popularity of the OS grows daily. Platform issues aside, Internet Explorer, despite Microsoft's inclusion of it with all Windows Installations, does not represent the only browser option. Netscape continues to enjoy a strong following of users numbering in the millions, and Lotus Notes is being used by numerous corporations as the 'standard' browser and e-mail application. Then, of course, there is AOL. Although basically an IE engine 'under the hood' AOL continues to include certain differences. Considering the vast numbers of AOL users, this browser must not be overlooked. If your site does not look good in AOL, then you are risking turning away a huge percentage of potential visitors. It should be clear that cross platform and multiple browser compatibility is a must. Therefore, understanding a few very basic and simple techniques to help keep your pages looking their best in the most places is also a must. Following, you will find a few tips and ideas to help you do just that. #1 Paint the canvas your visitors will see As a web site designer wanting to be as efficient in my work as possible, I have configured my Mac to use two monitors. As my mouse leaves the screen of one, it appears on the other. Thus, I have a canvas that, on most days, is 1856 pixels wide over 32 horizontal inches. If I want to, I can easily boost that to over 2000 pixels wide. But, my clients and the average visitor on the web do not have two monitors. In fact, most of them have the screen resolution set to 800 X 600 or 1024 X 768. What's more, every single time I have gone to a client who uses AOL, their browser window opens to what looks to be a 640 pixel wide default no mater how large the monitor or screen resolution. On one of my first projects, I had designed a site to a modest 700 pixel wide format with a nice top navigation area. I went to my clients office to get some 'point and discuss' feedback to find her new 21 inch monitor -- set at 640X480 resolution. My designs looked terrible! If you intend your web site to appeal to the broadest range of visitors, you need to design in a way that will look good even at low resolutions. Check with some of your typical visitors and see what kind of resolutions they normally use. #2 Use Tables to Control Width Tables are great things when trying to control the way text and images go together. In order to achieve a nice looking design, using tables is the first technique to consider. Tables can be assigned a fixed width in pixels or a fixed percentage of the window width. There are advantages to both approaches. If you are not concerned about the relative vertical arrangement of objects in a table cell, using the fixed percentage allows for more fluid layouts. If, however, you want to keep text wrapped around an image with more consistency, using the percent approach could lead to major differences. Text will wrap quite differently in a cells of different pixel widths. To have better control, consider using fixed pixel width. However, you must now start making some compromises. If you want to offer a site that looks good at 640X'480
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