What Web browsers is it important to support?
It is important that Web services
must be accessible to a wide range of browsers and hardware devices (e.g.
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) as well as PCs). Web services should be
usable by browsers that support W3C recommendations such as HTML, Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS) and the Document Object Model (DOM).
Note:
- You do not have to support every browser in existence.
- You must ensure that your pages validate against a published DTD.
- You must test your pages against a representative combination of web browsers
and operating systems.
Netscape 4.x browsers, i.e. browsers in Netscape series 4, (e.g. Netscape 4.07,
4.08, 4.71, etc.) have very poor support for CSS and we are aware of the difficulties
this can pose. However just as the difficulties posed by Netscape 4.x differ
amongst those projects affected, so do their potential response to the problem;
hence there is no definitive one-size-fits-all answer.
Action steps:
- Ensure your Web pages validate against the published DTD (Document Type Definition,
aka DOCTYPE). Consistent, valid usage of HTML will greatly assist you in avoiding
many problems.
- As part of your wider user testing programme, create as comprehensive a
list as practical of different computer operating systems, (e.g. Windows 2000,
Mac OS 10, etc.) and browsers, (e.g. versions of Netscape, Internet Explorer,
Opera, etc.). Systematically test against all these browsers/OS combinations.
(You might consider publishing a list of brower/OS combinations that you
have successfully tested in an "about" section of your pages.)
- Where problems are observed, you should in the first instance investigate
the problem and attempt to resolve where possible.
- If the effort required to fix the problem is too great, (which may indicate
a need to write separate pages targeted at the problematic browser(s)), we
recommend that you implement a strategy of detecting those users and directing
them to a warning page.
:
The warning page should inform users of the problem and offer links to updated
versions of browsers available for downloading. If you have a text-only version
of the site, you may offer them that too, as an alternative.
- As part of your normal monitoring strategy, you should be aware of the users
of your website, including the browsers they are using and the proportion
of the overall total who are using browsers that are giving difficulties.
If a review of the results of your monitoring indicates that a significant
proportion of your audience is using, say, Netscape 4.x browsers, then you
need to consider devoting more time and effort to developing the means to
meet that significant demand.
Further Information
FAQ Number 20
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