Chapter 2. Designing for a Variety of Browsers

Most web authors agree that the biggest challenge (and headache) in web design is dealing with a multitude of browsers and their varying support of web standards. Does a page that is designed to be functional on all browsers necessarily need to be boring? Is it possible to please everyone? And if not, where do you draw the line? How many past browser versions do you need to cater to with your designs?

The situation is better than it was a few years ago, but the struggle is not over. For instance, you can now be confident that at least 99% of users have browsers that support nearly all of HTML 4. Unfortunately, there are still inconsistencies in the way Cascading Style Sheets are implemented. And of course, older browser versions that pre-date the current standards take a long time to fade away entirely.

This chapter provides background information, statistics, and current wisdom from professional web designers that may help you deal with browser differences. It focuses on the traditional graphical computer-based browsers that developers generally keep in mind. Web browsing clients for mobile devices are discussed in Chapter 3, and assistive browsing devices for the disabled are addressed in Chapter 5.