Designs By Deb

Good vs Evil in the browser wars!

A client of mine asked me to make a post about the different browsers and why they render the information differently.

It’s not a simple answer and really goes back to the early days of the browser. That was the day of Internet Explorer and Netscape for windows based machines. I’ll only touch on the windows based browsers in this post.

Each company was vying to dominate the browser market. The first browser war was followed by a rapid succession of releases of browsers with newer features. Features, meant to win over the consumer took priority over fixing the bugs in both browsers. Both companies also began adding proprietary features to the browser as well in it’s war to win the consumer. This was back in the mid 90′s.

In 1996 IE seemed to follow “more” closely with W3C’s published specifications and standards. CSS (cascading style sheets) was gaining popularity in the design area allowing for ease in layout. Dynamic pages were evolving where the pages and flow of text could change after the page was loaded. IE was better equipped to handle this aspect with its newer releases.

Typically during this time you’d often see “this page best viewed in…” with the logo of the respective company in icon form. There was lots of money to be made by being “the” browser. And, with the advent of the WYSIWYG editors (both Netscape and IE had their own versions – Netscape Composer and FrontPage) both had loyal designer followings to the extent that good and evil evolved through the almost cult level following.

Both of these leaders made huge mistakes. Neither of them focused on fixing the bugs. They both continued to add proprietary features instead of following W3C Standards without waiting for W3C approval. Browsers began rendering the html code much differently because of the packages designers were using. And, the exploits to browsers became much more pronounced.

The result was Microsoft had deeper pockets and greater influence in develpment and creation of markets for its browser. In late 1996 Netscape was later bought by AOL and IE seemed to dominate with a 96% market share. Microsoft took years to release a new version of a browser though, basking in the perceived win.

But, yea, there’s always a “but” in wars. In the wings a foundation called Mozilla and Opera (the third most popular browser on Windows, Linux and Mac) formed a group which would design a browser that was open technology standards which added more capability and was backward-compatible with existing technologies.

What the Mozzila/Opera collaberation did was create a browser which complied with standards already in existence and continues to build upon those standards.

So, here we are in 2007, Netscape (as it was known) is gone and the now dominant browsers are Mozilla based FireFox and Internet Explorer.

The end result of what you see in your browser is a combination of old technology, new technology and designer unawareness. Thus, that new computer will show a web page that looks one way. You’ll go home and view that same page and it will render differently because it could be that you’re still using Netscape, IE v6 or in some cases IE v4 or 5.

I have a client who approached me to maintain and work with the SEO aspect of her website. I almost exclusively work in Firefox for a number of reasons. But, my point is I saw her website one way (a nice solid green background) and she saw it an entirely different way (green left column, white background) based upon the fact that her designer build her website for based upon IE6 standards which was non compliant standards wise.

We all have a browser we like for whatever reason… And, when we view things we assume everyone sees things the same way we are seeing it. It’s my job as the designer of a website to make sure that happens. And, it’s not easy… There are still those who use Netscape there are still those who use IE v 4.0. I must build a site which can be viewed the same on each and every browser. I build the site and test it. Then if there’s a problem I create a fix so that specific browser can view it.

Because the internet is technology based it changes rapidly with consumer wants and what the market “thinks” the consumer wants. Keep this in mind and do keep your browser updated regardless of how comfortable you are with it.
“If it’s not broke don’t fix it” doesn’t bode well with your viewing pleasure.

To see what version of IE you’re using you can go to the Help menu, choose “about” and it will tell you which version you’re using. If it’s not IE 7 go to updates and update your version today! Better yet… go check out FireFox Compare for yourself.