As you’ve probably all seen there are numerous and various posts pushing to get rid of support for IE6. Everything from blocking visitors to a site to showing a subtle message suggesting an upgrade. I even came across a site recently that offers a site plug-in that “silently” installs Firefox, then runs it and opens the site you were on, even if you don’t have admin privileges.

We all know the main reasons given why people still run IE6:-

1. Corporate PCs that are either locked down, or tied to legacy intranets that are too old to work properly with modern browsers - not an excuse as Google Chrome can be installed and used for the internet, even on a locked-down PC.
2. Pirated Windows installations - not an argument as any other browser could be installed.
3. People who are too lazy to upgrade or install something new.
4. People who are too frightened to upgrade or install something new.
5. People who don’t know how to upgrade or install something new.
6. People who like IE6.

“The fact is, IE6 is here to stay for some time yet and we can’t ignore it, so we just have to learn to live with that.”

Anyway, I am not getting in to that argument in this post as there are far too many posts about it already. The fact is, IE6 is here to stay for some time yet and we can’t ignore it, so we just have to learn to live with that.

This brings me on to the reason for this post, which is cross-browser compatibility (I can hear you groaning already), but not so much to talk about it, as to find out how designers and developers undertake the mammoth task of ensuring that their designs and functionality work in (almost) all scenarios.

Part of my job as a developer involves testing sites in the most popular browsers and, as you, dear reader, have probably already discovered, it can be a long and arduous task.

I currently test sites in IE6, IE8, IE7-compatibility mode in IE8, Firefox 3, Opera 9, Google Chrome, and Safari 3 & Safari 4 (because the controls - textboxes, droplists, etc. are so different between the two versions). I test all of these on Windows Vista. I also test them on a PC with Windows XP installed, because Vista and XP do not render the same. Today I discovered, via external user testing, that Firefox 3.5 on Vista does not render the same as my Firefox 3 on Vista. Apple Mac - don’t even go there!

I know there are quite a few sites out there that enable you to see how your site renders on any browser and OS (I use xenocode for IE6 testing, although input is sadly disabled), but almost all of them are impractical when you have a site with literally dozens of different page layouts.

Which brings me to the main topic, which I mentioned earlier…

How do you ensure that your site behaves?

I am curious to know how designers with their (predominantly) Apple Macs develop their sites to render correctly on Windows browsers!

So, go on, share your thoughts on how you feel about this unenviable but essential part of web design.

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Tags: browsers, compatibility, testing, webdesign

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 12:39 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.