Optimizing Designs for Different Browsers
Dragan on 01. Apr '08 13
Some would argue that a website must look absolutely identical across all (modern) browsers. And not only how it looks, but the way it performs as well. Following that logic – it is justifiable to throw all the resources needed in order to accomplish that. Excuse me, but I beg to differ.
It is very common practice among JavaScripters to have a feature of a site enabled for certain browsers, and not available for certain other browsers. It is a standard practice, you see it every day. The question I’d like to ask is why do we – designers for the Web – are bending over backwards to make our sites look exactly the same across all modern browsers and platforms?
There is a certain point you get to when coding a site, sort of like a crossroads. One way is to spend a certain amount of time (often not at all insignificant) making it look and perform the same in all browsers, or just make it decent in “weaker” browsers such as IE6 and deliver the originally intended design to browsers who can handle it. First of all – time is money, obviously, so that’s what you should take into consideration. The second, and perhaps even a more important thing – is it really worth it?
My stand on this whole issue is that things should be made as consistent as possible – to a certain point. If it’s too much of a hassle – find a workaround for IE6 or whichever troublemaker you run into (IE7?) and offer a poor man’s version alternative to users using those browsers, serve the full version to the ones that can handle it. You just need to make sure you are not breaking the user experience by this decision, or seriously damaging the usability of the site. Also – if the matter is solely in the esthetics – don’t bother all that much with pixel perfection and whatnot.
So Finally – Do Websites Need to Look the Same in All Browsers?
Absolutely not. Devoting a large amount of resources to this goal is counter-productive, tedious and of course very costly. We are finally at a stage when we can safely make use of some of the advanced CSS3 properties to better the user experiences of people using browsers with solid Web standards support, as long as the “poor man’s“user experience is still satisfactory and acceptable. I really feel that there is no reason really to hold out any more and design for the lowest common denominator (again – IE6).
Don’t post articles like this on April 1st!
— Ilija Studen 2. April 2008, 08:04 #
Well sorry but this is not an April fool’s joke, I’m not into that kind of thing. :)
— Dragan Babić 2. April 2008, 09:34 #
I think it really depends on your audience. If the majority of the target viewers are using the weaker browsers, then, as professionals, it is up to us to design the client’s website to translate well on these browsers. Designing for the designers is not always the best practice when working with clients … Just my opinion.
— Rob Verrilli 4. April 2008, 06:35 #
That is a very good point Rob – and should always be considered. However if we are talking about progress and pushing the envelope, I see limiting your deliverable just do it’s consistent in all browsers means falling short of what you could have done.
I guess what I wanted to say is that I’m sick of being limited and held back by flaky browsers and that I feel that it is time to move on. Offer rich support for people using good browsers, and limited, “poor man’s” version to people using browsers that can’t handle it.
— Dragan Babić 4. April 2008, 13:21 #
I agreee that it is a pain in the ass to fix websites for IE6 and can take time depending how complicated a website is. I recently did a site using alot of transparent png32’s and that was such a misssion to get looking fine.
But if anything I would spend your time gettng Ie6 and 7 looking fine and making firefox the poor mans version. even though we know firefox renders correctly IE6 and IE7 still take up 80% or more of the market, IE6 a bit less than half of that.
The world isn’t going to upgrade because we stop caring about IE6, no matter how shit it is.
— mooty web design 5. April 2008, 01:09 #
I am simply arguing in favor of using the resources at hand more efficiently, I am not putting a request for all developers to stop supporting IE6 and other weaker browsers. What I am trying to get across is that we shift the focus from it. Concentrate more on delivering better experiences to people using more capable browsers, instead of spending all our energy to just simply making it work in IEs and limiting our reach to what IEs capabilities are.
Now, I’d just like to note that I am constantly referring to Internet Explorer browsers as bad browsers. Sadly that is still true, but I do recognize and deeply appreciate the effort IE team is putting into making it better with each new version. The same could be said for Safari versions prior to 3.x – take Flickr’s photo upload page for example which illustrates the point of this post excellently.
— Dragan Babić 5. April 2008, 15:29 #
I think web site has to be optimized for all browsers, because it is your job as a developer to help people experience your web site in best posible way – i hate web sites with messages like don’t use IE, use Firefox, or page is best viewed with Firefox … don’t get me wrong – i as a web developer hate IE too, but it is not up to you to decide … maybe on some personal page or a blog, but if you produce web sites for the market it should be optimized the best posible way …
— nikola 8. April 2008, 09:13 #
i just make site look good in opera and firefox and other browsers (cause ie is not a browser, it’s crap) and write “if you experience problems with the site, and you are using ie, it serves you right”
— neondragon 10. April 2008, 08:17 #
@neodragon – this is not very professional … I don’t like IE either but you can’t do this … most of the people are still using some version of IE … so you can’t treat them like idiots…
— nikola 10. April 2008, 09:14 #
I have to admit that I’m also pissed of when making complex websites. It usually turns 99% same in IE from beginning, as I have enough experience in order to make a code and know that it still’s gonna look fine in IE6. I didnt have serious problems with IE7. But more complex site is, more problems come.
But statistics are other thing; most of my visitors, for example, got FF. Only 18% of them are using IE6 but this is still a big procent. In a year and so, we can maybe forget IE6, as we did with IE5.
— Dalibor 10. April 2008, 16:30 #
I completely agree, although some clients may be disappointed if you show them the work in the best browser, and they go home and view it on the worst browser. Keeping regular things in mind you can design pretty well for all browsers, you get a lot of issues when you incorporate lots of images or png’s and things of that nature.
— hellyeahdude.com 15. April 2008, 02:47 #
Dragan, I completely agree with You. Reading the comments, I see that most people got You wrong. Of course we should not just “stop caring about IE6” or “not optimize for certain browsers” etc. We should just care a little less :)
About IE and M$.. Nobody can tell me that The Microsoft Corporation is not able to produce a good browser.. The bastards don’t want to do that.. on purpose, ‘cause their crappy rendering engine probably depends on some other crappy solutions they sell, and who knows what else. Ooups.. you can see that me don’t like ‘em very much.
— Nikola 21. April 2008, 10:22 #
@Nikola, I am under that impression too, but I have made it a little bit clearer in the comments, most people just read the post and act on that, but once you read through my replies, I think I made my thoughts much clearer through them.
On another note, in one of the comments above I have mentioned Flickr’s on-site upload page that hasn’t been available for Safari users such as myself. That no longer stands true because now it works on Webkit browsers too.
That being said – I want to use Flickr again as an example and point how they didn’t bother with optimizing the uploader for Webkit at first. Instead they just supplied a workaround until the optimization becomes a priority which is acceptable and I’d even say preferred method in my opinion.
— Dragan Babić 21. April 2008, 13:23 #