Cross-Browser

It is an unfortunate fact that browsers don’t all interpret websites in exactly the same manner. Moreover, some of them drastically differ from the international standards— those set by an organization known as W3C. Some browser developers (Microsoft to name one) have even invented their own “standards,” which when put to use, display poorly or not at all in other browsers.

Therefore, a web developer is restricted not only to the standards which all browsers can interpret, but those bits that are browser-specific, must be avoided as well.

However, there is an exception when it is certain that other browsers will ignore it and so long as the difference between one browser and the rest isn’t significant. For instance, FireFox can style boxes to have rounded corners (not a standard style). So long as other browsers don’t attempt to interpret this and ruin the whole box as a result, but instead leaves the corners as-is, then this is okay in practice. (Of course, that the element may now be styled either way, depending on the browser, also has to work with the design of the website, which isn’t likely to work in this example.)

A good website utilizes set standards for styles and other aspects to optimize download time, file size and presentation, and works on all the latest browsers. The important content of a website should also be able to work on older browsers. A good web developer achieves this by testing the website on multiple browsers— especially those most commonly in use today.

This is standard practice at joerhomey.com.