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Does your site work in all browsers?

Posted By Joe Savelberg On In Creation,Tips | 1 Comment

A web site that is being launched should be optimized for all browsers. A visitor to your site won’t change their computer system (screen resolution, browser version,…) in order to see your site. Your visitor is likely to turn away quickly and go to another source for information because there are so many sites on the Internet.

In the early days of the Internet there was a browser war going on between Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Currently most people still use a version of Internet Explorer 6 (80%). Internet Explorer 7 is used about 36% of all Internet Explorer users. However you should remember that there are still millions of people using “alternative” browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape Communicator, Opera, WebTV, I-Mode enabled mobile phones, text only browsers (for the visual- and/or hearing-impaired persons). Not all browsers support JavaScript, Java or plug-ins (Shockwave, QuickTime, RealAudio, Flash). When possible you should always offer an alternative version of your site for those people and you might get a few extra sales through your e-commerce project.

Sometimes, it’s faster to execute a certain function in the browser through a JavaScript, Java or Client-Side Imagemap, however an alternative version should always be present on the server (through scripts or CGI’s) which takes over when the browser doesn’t support that technology.

Here are a few statistics [1] recently taken from a popular web site (http://www.lovetest.com [2]) which shows what kind of environment is supported. We analyzed 200,000 visits during the first 14 days of December 2005 and then again 450,000 visits in August 2007. The site is mostly visited by teenage girls and women. LoveTest.com is part of the entertainment web sites run by Euregio.Net [3].

Resolution:

In my opinion, you should design your web site for at least 800×600 pixel as this allows most people to see your site correctly. If you know that you have mostly technical people visiting your site, then you could design it for 1024×768 pixel as these visitors tend to have larger screens and newer computers.

Resolution 2007-08 2005-12 2002-08 Opinion
1600×1200 0.18% – 0.12% If you design for 800×600 you can support at least 96.93% of your visitors. In 2002, “only” 87,02% of your visitors supported 800×600 or greater. You can even design for 1024×768 and support 84.11% of all visitors.
1440×900 2.77% 0.50% –
1400×1050 0.41% 0.55% 0.10%
1280×1024 9.29% 6.58% 1.30%
1280×960 0.68% 0.49% –
1280×800 12.68% 3.17% –
1280×768 1.68% 0.90% –
1152×864 3.05% 2.80% 1.47%
1024×768 53.37% 57.89% 23.99%
800×600 12.82% 24.83% 60.04%
800×553 – – 0.14% If you design for 800×600 or more then you might lose around 1% of your visitors. Most unreported visitors will use higher resolutions.
640×480 0.21% 0.54% 6.86%
560×420 – – 0.24%
Unreported 2.86% 1.75% 4.38%
Total: 100% 100% 98.64%

Color Depth:

The color depth is not as important as the screen size, but you should also take it into account where possible.

Color Depth 2007-08 2005-12 2002-08 Opinion
32 bit 87.56% 77.10% 26.03% If you design for 16-bit you can support 99.73% of your visitors.
16 million (24 bit) 3.37% 4.97% 11.23%
65536 (16 bit) 8.80% 17.21% 51.98%
15 bit 0.00% – 0% 0.27% of your visitors support less than 16-bit.
12 bit 0.00% – 0%
256 (8 bit) 0.21% 0.60% 5.81%
4 bit 0.00% 0.02% 0.04%
1 bit 0.05% 0.10% 0.50%
Unreported – – 4.38%
Total: 100% 100% 99.97%

Other aspects you should look into are the JavaScript version which are supported by your visitors, the Flash version and also the connection speed and most importantly the browser.

Browsers:

On the LoveTest.com site, we noticed that in December 2005, most people used Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP and it’s still the case in August 2007. Firefox is gaining ground on all platforms and accounted for around 15% of our visits. Windows XP is the most popular operating system while Vista is now at around 7% of all Windows users. Macintosh is getting market share as well.

When you build a web site, you should make sure that it works correctly with Internet Explorer 6.0 (on Windows) as it’s used by 63% of the visitors. Internet Explorer 5.5 or below is used very little. Internet Explorer is used by 36%. To make your site compatible with other operating systems, you should test it with Firefox and Safari. That way, you’ve got the majority of people covered. If you’ve got more time on your hands, also test the site with Opera, Mozilla and Netscape.

Microsoft will discontinue support for Internet Explorer on the Mac by the end of the year 2006 (News.com has the whole story… [4]). That said, you shouldn’t worry too much as only a very small fraction of people still use IE on the Mac. Safari and Firefox are the most popular browsers on MacOS X. Beware that there are some important differences between Safari 1.x and 2.x. You should check your site with both versions.

Browser Photo [5] is a service run by Keynote Netmechanic who will take screen shots of your web site using various browsers and platforms. If you’d like, you can also test most browsers on your own computer. You just need to install several browser versions on your computer and test all pages of your site.

Here is the majority of browsers you should test. If you work on a Macintosh computer, you can install all those browsers on the same machine using various operating systems through Microsoft Virtual PC [6]. VirtualPC also works with Windows based PC’s [7] and lets you use various Windows versions simultaneously (Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, NT, XP,…)

Browser List:

MacOS / MacOS X

Windows

Other

Quick Check List:

Here’s the quick checklist to make sure your site works for most people worldwide.

If you expect your site visitors only coming from North America or Europe and industrialized countries, then you can use these guidelines:

Keeping this checklist in mind, you should be able to accommodate around 98% of all your visitors.

Good luck with your web publishing projects [21]!