Make site compatible with all web browsers??

First off, Id advise you to read most of the notes on this forum, especially in website critique area, You could get some info there to start up your website...

Now to help You out:

When Making and previewing your webpages or html... use Mozilla... Pretty much upto the point that you like what you see...

When you think the page is quite done, browse it with opera and ie...
Now if some stuff are not aligning, adjust it by trying out different codes in your html... All the while refreshing to browse on the three browsers... Make sure you had the backup of the one that looks ok in mozilla...

If you successfully edited it and looks fine, its this suggestion that wont make it harder for you... Now if you could post your site for critiqueing ont website critiques area and mention you need help with cross-browser compatibility, forum members might help you out with the codes...

Validation is your friend www.w3c.org

While validating your html with fix most of your problems it may miss one or two if you are using IE only tags (colouring mostly), validate your pages, fix only the top 3-5 errors at a time then re-validate, as errors further down could be from the ones you just fixed.

If you get stuck on how to fix any of the errors, just let us know and we can help you out. (read: help you to fix the errors so you learn, not fix them for you so you don't learn)

[edit] Welcome to TWF btw [/edit]

Since the vast majority of internet users use Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox, I'd focus on these first. More and more people are switching to Mozilla and other browsers, so you can't ignore them anymore. Check your stats to monitor who's using what to view your site. You never know what is going to be next hot browser, so it's best to make your page look good on all of them.

Good luck!

Its funny no one mentions NETSCAPE . That and IE was my problems with tables

Netscape I understand, with out doubt the worst browser ever conceived. IE on the other hand, should not have a problem with tables. If they are correctly nested, and coded.
I use tables all the time, IE is never a problem. Firefox at present, has a little problem with defining height on tables.

The website below with my signature, is a table layout, but has no problem with any browser.

I 'm not talking about using markup for table height, you can not do that, or shouldn't. Firefox does not define table height well, by content. The only way it will is by doing things wrong, and using height markup. Then your page will not validate, plus it will give problems with other browsers. Maybe they will swat the bug, in a later release.

I personally have never had one minutes problem out of IE, and tables. The biggest problem with tables, is the same as with other markup languages, ignorance of proper use. In fact, I have found IE the most forgiving toward improper markup.

IMHO Netscape Coders Developed Moz...

You are correct Demon.

I'm old enough to have watched it all happening: Mosaic was the first real browser laying the foundations of HTML developed by a team led by Marc Andreessen. Marc left to develop a killer commercial browser from scratch called Mozilla (Mosaic + Godzilla) which was renamed Netscape and which trail blased with many innovations such as caching pages, tables, javascript, etc. Netscape was then redeveloped further into Mozilla.

No one browser helped develop the Internet more then Netscape, and to say it was the worst is astonishing. Jonny come lately IE is actaully based on Mosaic (see the about box) patched up to catch up with Netscape and 'bundled' (ie integrated) with Windows to give it an unfair advantage and kill off Netscape.

Anyway, to get back to the original post - Surely the best way of making your site work with all browsers is to use XHTML+CSS, and certainly avoid tables if you can.

If anybody figures a way to make your website look alike, with every browser. Please let me know!.

you could use the age old method of javascript determining the browser type. and then output different tags depending on the browser type.

That way you could have it draw a different sized table for each browser and make the slight adjustments in each to get it looking identical in each one.

Never tried this tho and probably wouldnt. Seems a bit of a bodged way to do things, not to mention it would add a fair bit of code to your pages depending on how many things u need to adjust.

Just a passing thought.

Well if you have all the time in the world, be nit picky, make it work for moz, then hack your way to other popular browsers to make it look the same, I did this before and it seems to work... Mix and Match codes...

Thats Why its should start from us to advocate standardization...
Kinda figured out to make sites quite uniform in all borwsers it became art for me now...

Quote: who is stopping netscape from making their own OS and including their browser with it

Believe it or not MS were very worried NS would do exactly that (and there were plans to do it as well), they were worried that Windows would become just an API that NS would wrap with it's own sexy web-based interface. Can't remember exactly but this might be why they brought out the active desktop and all that channels crud (that everyone ignored).

I think it was when Netscape Communicator first came out that you could wrap the desktop within the browser as an option. It was also an option of Opera up to v6 to do this.

Clearly the way ahead is to use XHTML+CSS. This combination has been specifically designed to allow you to create sites that 'work' for everyone, even those with accessibility problems, and yet still lets designers create stunning looking sites if they wish.

Also by separating presentation from content in this way pages are easier to write, easier to maintain or completely revamp the look and feel, and less likely to have basic problems - you'd be amazed at some of the issues with pages tested at my site.

Okay there are discrepancies between what CSS features browsers support, but the work arounds tend to be well-known (it's been out for years), and tend to be easier to account for than patching HTML 4 to support many browser/platform combinations. Maybe if more people preferred writing in XHTML+CSS, tool/browser developers would provide better support so the problem would reduce?

So shouldn't forums like this be encouraging people to use XHTML+CSS and showing them how to avoid features (such as tables) that cause the most problems. Or have I missed some great failing of XHTML+CSS ??

andyh wrote:
So shouldn't forums like this be encouraging people to use XHTML+CSS and showing them how to avoid features (such as tables) that cause the most problems.

I absolutely agree with you Andy! This is an ongoing discussion for many of us though, some feel we should push people towards XHTML/CSS, others feel this is too complicated for people just starting-out with Web Design. I will always advocate standards, whilst people like Busy will berate me for doing so. Do a search and you'll see this very discussion cropping up time and again, I don't believe we have a firm policy on this yet at TWF, as with many things this policy - if we ever make one - will be derived from popular opinion.

Oh and I don't think people like Busy are necessarily wrong, just a difference of opinion is all that's happening. Let's face it, if we all had the same opinions the world would be very boring

Thought my ears were burning
Sorry if I come across as if berate JeevesBond, as you say it's a difference of opinion and not personal.

I'm all for standards, but everyone (well some) have a different interpretation of the levels of standards, example XHTML, I personally wish everyone used it, but no where is it written that tables can not be used with it, tables are great if used correctly, CSS is awesome too, maybe better. Using tables with valid XHTML (trans or strict) with CSS is not wrong. Using CSS with very little XHTML is not wrong, not using CSS at all is not wrong and can all be validated.

My biggest problem I guess is people think XHTML is a new (text) language - it's not, it's old, it's IMO how HTML should of been released. The biggest hurdle old HTMLer's have with XHTML is lower case and closing tags, XHTML is a tidy language. People have to relearn how to write the tags tody, this makes people think it's new. The only real difference between HTML and XHTML is XHTML is all lowercase and single tags like , and etc have to be closed with a slash (/). There are no new additions, some retraction suggestions (ie font, center etc) but nothing new.
CSS on the other hand has come leaps and bonds since first released (which is also very old), CSS can just about be used as a stand alone (probably will end up like that) which is great as it gives cleaner more design friendly coding.

Forums and tutorials for years have been trying to guide folks to do the real thing but then you get one big site saying write all HTML tags in uppercase and it's all wasted. Sites and webhosts suggesting the use of frontpage and even publisher (even seen one way back suggesting word) put the cause back years.

YES write tidy code
YES validate your code
YES use CSS
YES smile at strangers

Tables are here to stay, written tidily there is nothing wrong with them, IE on the other hand should be wiped out, but will never happen