Designing for Different Browser Experiences

Rona Kilmer - 1.10.2011 2:50 PM

The old school thought was that all websites should look exactly the same in every browser but times they are a changin’.

Different browsers have different capabilities. Now there are four major browsers available, plus a number of not so major ones AND each of those has different versions. Some of those browsers came out nearly a DECADE ago (IE6 cough, cough). A decade is a huge amount of time in the internet world.

The difference in capabilities between modern day browsers and those born a decade ago is massive. For instance, newer browsers have better security features, run much faster and support newer standards such as CSS3 and HTML5. To design and build sites that work and look exactly the same in ALL browsers would mean designing to the lowest common denominator. The results would be a very boring web. This is not to say that we should just ignore the lowest common denominator. We should always make sure our sites function at a basic level in all browsers but we should not spend hours and hours of time writing hacks and pulling our hair out to make sure that every single effect is exactly the same in every browser. It’s a waste of time, hemorrhages money and slows performance on all browsers.

Users choose how they want to experience the web when they choose their browser. Those happy to chug along on ancient browsers are not high maintenance web users therefore the added bells and whistles that can be used for sites viewed in modern browsers won’t be missed. Different browsers deliver different experiences for users and that is okay.

At Webolutions we design and build sites for the latest two releases of IE, Firefox and Safari. We also make sure our sites function on a basic level in older browsers. This way everyone is happy.

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