Browser Compatibility – What’s It About?

To further explain browser compatibility picture this scenario. You have just got yourself a beautifully designed website with all the latest technologies in the industry. It has surpassed your grueling testing on your new smartphone as well as your tablet which you use daily with ease. You are so proud of your new website that you start advertising it around to everyone that is willing to look at it. You then receive an email from your dearest friend that loves everything android and it holds a screenshot of your website, but with horrible irregularities.

To your horror, you phone your web developer in a panic and you start hearing the words “Cross Browser Compatibility”. It was definitely your native language he was speaking, yet you put the phone down as to prevent any further brain aneurysms from happening. You turn to your default Internet Explorer browser and start typing… “What is Cross Browser Compatibility?” and this is what comes up.

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Cross Browser compatibility simply refers to making sure your website works properly across all browsers. The reason this is a new phenomenon and not well known is due to the increased variety of browsers we can use today. Initially the word browser was synonymous with “Internet Explorer”, Microsoft’s browser to help interpret the World Wide Web. Although they were the first; we now see five newer browsers popular for browsing the World Wide Web today, made from entirely different companies. Some you may recognize include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera and the likes. This is where cross browser compatibility has sprung from. No two browsers are alike and therefore further website quality control is now necessary.

A website that has been tested over multiple browsers is more likely to uncover irregularities. The outcome being a more complete website with less hidden discrepancies. As you can imagine within this there are also more or less prominent irregularities. Furthermore within these browsers there are different versions, most are current, but some can be horribly outdated. The main focus through this process to try and address the majority of possible irregularities to your specific end user.There is always a target audience for which the website was intended. If most of your younger and “tech savvy” generations are the intended target audience then its likely they will have managed to update their browser with relative ease, however the older generations might be running older versions of a browser out of fear they will cause irreparable damage to their computer. Hence we say know your outcome and think of the end user first through the website design and development process.

Source: The Webshack