Testing Your Web Design for Browser Compatibility

When developing a web design for a website, you need to periodically check your website in different browsers. Each browser will take your code and render it differently. Some scripts that you write in HTML or CSS can have different impact on the website design. While IE 7 will display text cleaner, Firefox 3 is closer to the W3C web standards. Both of these browsers are the most used and will render differently. Testing Browser Compatibility is very important for your site design.

CSS Margin and Padding Examples in Different Browsers

Browser Compatibility

When having a website design you might use different CSS commands to do different things. Such as the css margin command. Having a 0 margin or having a 10px margin can display different in browsers. Padding can also play a different role in website design. Some instances you can have padding: 5px. But the spacing in one browser can be different in another. One way or getting these to have the same results is to set your margin and padding to 0. Try to make things start in the same place then work your way out. Always make sure you check the browsers after each adjustment to margin or padding.

Text will Render Differently

Watch your text. Text can display different in different browsers. In some cases text can look perfect in one browser and blurry in another. Try to find a font that look acceptable in different browsers. Having blurry or unreadable text in your website can make your visitors leave and make you look less professional. Text size can make a difference in operating systems. There is a lot of web development that works in a Windows OS platform. But web development on a Mac OS can change the result of text compared to Windows OS.

Browser Compatibility Test Website

Visit and Try Browser Shots - Homepage Screenshot

Visit Browser Shots to test browser compatibility for your design. Browser Shots will run your website through different operating systems with different browsers and show you screen shots of what your webpage would look like in the different scenarios. It is very useful and recommended when you are ready to post.

Browser Shots

Keeping Testing with all Browsers

Test with Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Firefox 2 & 3, Safari and others. If you keep testing your website while developing it, you will be better off in the results. It can be very frustrating and cause many headaches. But user consistency and compatibility is important to your visitors. You don't want exclude anyone out of your website, every visitor is important.

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