While getting the mail yesterday I discovered what I assume are moles destroying my front yard. I took to the web to confirm my suspicions and find a solution. In my surfing came a across a website that looked terrible.
The site was not displaying properly in Firefox – the header was shifted to the left and the site content to the left, and part of the content was overlapping and completely unreadable. (I flipped over to Internet Explorer and the site was readable.) In February 2011 42% of web users were using Firefox. [w3schools.com] Yikes! That is a lot of users that would not be able to use that site. I would imagine that the bounce rate on this site is rather high. The website in Firefox was like business with a locked door; I could see through the window but I could not get in to get what I wanted.
This served as a great reminder for the importance of cross-browser testing. Have you checked your site in other browsers? Your analytics will show you what browsers (and versions) people are using when visiting your site and you can use this as a guide for browser testing. Do not forget to test your site on your smart phone or tablet too. Do you have a complete Flash site or elements of Flash on your site? Did you know that iPhones and iPads do not support Flash?
Every website I create is tested on the most popular browsers before the site is made live. I make every effort to ensure that your website looks the same across all browsers. Sometimes it is cost prohibitive or impossible to make your site display exactly the same in some older versions of browsers. In these cases, your site should degrade nicely and still be readable and functional. Need help testing your site or making it cross browser compatible? Send me an email.
