The majority of your website’s visitors will access it using a browser. Your website code is interpreted differently by each browser, which means that it may seem different to visitors who use different browsers when they visit your website. For example, you should avoid relying on a browser to detect a content type or encoding correctly when you did not specify one.
The following additional measures can be taken to ensure that your site does not behave in unanticipated ways
Do Cross-Browser Testing on as Many Different Browsers as Possible
Once you’ve completed your web design, test it on various browsers to ensure that all of your visitors receive the same high-quality experience that you spent so much time and effort creating. Ideally, you should begin testing as early as possible in the construction of your website. You may notice that different browsers – and even different versions of the same browser – display your site in a variety of different ways. With the help of services such as Google Analytics, you may obtain a decent sense of which browsers are the most frequently used to access your site.
Write HTML and CSS That is Clear, Concise, and Follows the HTML5 Specification
In some browsers, even if your HTML is not valid, your site may display successfully; nevertheless, there is no guarantee that it will display correctly in all browsers – or all future browsers. An effective technique to ensure that your page appears nearly the same in all browsers is to write proper HTML and CSS that follow the HTML5 Specification. Then test it in as many browsers as possible before publishing it. The W3 Consortium provides HTML and CSS validators which are important for verifying your site’s code.
Specify the Character Encoding
Provide an encoding for your document to aid browsers in rendering the text on your page. It is best to place the encoding declaration at the head of the document because some browsers will not recognize charset declarations located farther down the content. In addition, check to see that your web server is not delivering HTTP headers that conflict with one another.
Consider Accessibility
A further consideration is that some technologies, such as ActiveX, may not render properly in all browsers. We recommend that you follow our recommendations for using rich media files and test your site in a text-only browser such as Lynx. Providing text-only alternatives to rich-media content and functionality will also make your site easier to crawl and index for search engines, as well as more accessible to users that use alternative technologies.
Conclusion
A website’s performance across different browsers is a very important task, even if it’s not the most exciting thing to do. It is imperative to make your site present well in all popular browsers if you want to gain an audience and provide a great user experience.
