Tips & Tricks: Testing, Testing, Testing

So you've got your latest webpage all finished and it looks fine on your computer, but you start hearing complaints that other people are having a problem seeing the page properly. What's wrong? You didn't test the page in their browser. Now you're asking "But I thought the point of HTML was that it should look the same on any broswer". The answer to that is that the point of the HTML standard is that it should look the same on any browser. However, browser developers have a habit of adding little extras to the browsers. Usually, they're very nice additions and sometimes give you a lot of extra functionality. However, they usually only work in that particular browser.

So the answer is to test your pages. Now there are more browsers than you can shake a stick at, but you really only need to focus on a couple.

• Netscape 4.x - this was Netscape's (a division of AOL-TimeWarner) most popular version for years and had a majority of the market share through a good deal of the mid to late 90's. Unfortunately, this is where you'll experience most of your problems. You can still download this version from Netscape's download site. Note: Netscape 4.x for Mac uses incredibly small default fonts and can drastically change the look of your site. Netscape 6.1+ does not have this problem
• Netscape 6.1+ - this browser is based on Netscape Mozilla engine which benefited greatly from a lot of open-source development. This is MUCH more standards-compliant. This is also available on Netscape's download site.
• Internet Explorer 5+ - this is Microsoft's latest web browser (currently at version 6) and currently the most popular browser on the web. This is available from Microsoft's download site.
• WebTV - this actually uses a variant of IE only with huge fonts and limited screen width. You can download a WebTV viewer at MSNtv's developer site (along with some guides for what WebTV does & does not support).

Most web editors (Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc.) will create pages that display correctly in IE and Netscape 6.1+ automatically.

At a bare minimum you should make sure that your page properly displays in the latest version of Netscape and IE.

Last Updated: 02.01.2002