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Web browsers galore!
My brother-in-law, a programmer, was recently brought in on a call regarding a beta site he was working on. The client was having some trouble viewing and using certain applications and the company hoped he could troubleshoot the issues. The conversation went like this:
Programmer: Alright, so what web browser are you using?
Client: I’m using Internet Explorer 7.
Programmer: Ok, so I’m going to ask you to shut that down.
Client: Sure … alright, I’ve closed Internet Explorer. Next?
Programmer: Never open it again.
Oh, he’s a funny one.
The lives of programmers and designers would be much simpler if they had the power to tell audiences and readers which web browsers to use. As you may know, various web browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Mozilla, Firefox, etc.) interpret and display code (particularly CSS) differently.
What might look like this in Safari:
Looks like this in Dillo (Dillo, you say? It’s a super archaic web browser that exactly zero people use – you need not worry about it - it’s just here for example’s sake):
While your website shouldn’t just be a pretty face (we’re clearly big on making your website work for you through web content and content marketing), it does need to appeal to those basic senses. Just like Rachel Leigh Cook’s character in She’s All That (only highbrow references here, folks) your website might be smart, funny and informative, but people won’t give it a chance if it looks like a bag of crap. Testing your landing page (and the rest of your site, for that matter) to ensure it appears properly in multiple web browsers is a must.
How do you test your site in different browsers? The cheap and dirty approach is to load your url in a testing site like BrowserShots. It will provide you with little screen shots of your webpage in a wide selection of browsers across different operating systems. You don’t need to care about all of them (like Dillo) – but you should care about the main ones. What are the main web browsers? Check your site stats to see who’s coming to your site and the browser they use (your analytics software should give you this data. If it doesn’t, you need a better analytic or web traffic tracking program).
See issues? If you don’t have an in-house programmer that can deal with it, consider contacting a content marketing company. While content is king, programming is the throne.
Tags: cheap and dirty, landing pages, testing, web browsers
