If you’ve tried using different Web browsers to surf to your favourite online hangouts, you’ve probably noticed that the same sites look a little different depending on which browser you’re using. That’s because page display varies according to browser compatibility.
Browser compatibility is the ability of the Web browser to properly interpret the hypertext markup language (HTML) that renders Web pages. HTML is a coding language that is “understood” a little differently by each Web browser. Most sites are designed to look correct in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, because it is believed to be the most ubiquitous browser. However, if you are a Web designer, your task is to code a site for maximum compatibility so that the pages look correct in other popular browsers as well, such as FireFox, IE, Opera, Safari, Google and text-based browsers.
When coding your website you must consider the following:
Test your site in as many browsers as possible
Once you've created your web design, you should review your site's appearance and functionality on multiple browsers to make sure that all your visitors are getting the experience you worked so hard to design. Ideally, you should start testing as early in your site development process as possible. Different browsers - and even different versions of the same browser - can see your site differently. You can use services such as Google Analytics to get a good idea of the most popular browsers used to view your site.
Write good, clean HTML
While your site may appear correctly in some browsers even if your HTML is not valid, there's no guarantee that it will appear correctly in all browsers or in all future browsers. The best way to make sure that your page looks the same in all browsers is to write your page using valid HTML and CSS, and then test it in as many browsers as possible. Clean, valid HTML is a good insurance policy, and using CSS separates presentation from content, and can help pages render and load faster. Validation tools, such as the free online HTML and CSS validators provided by the W3 Consortium, are useful for checking your site, and tools such as HTML Tidy can help you quickly and easily clean up your code.
Consider accessibility
Not all users may have JavaScript enabled in their browsers. In addition, technologies such as Flash and ActiveX may not render well (or at all) in every browser. We recommend following our guidelines for using Flash and other rich media, and testing your site in a text-only browser such as Lynx. As a bonus, providing text-only alternatives to rich-media content and functionality will make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site, and also make your site more accessible to users who use alternative technologies such as screen readers.
Here is a video to further explain:
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For ways on how to create cross browser compatibility in HTML click here
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