One of the most difficult aspects to designing web pages and full sites is the process of ensuring compatibility with the dozens of different web browsers currently on the market today. In the past, this was simple. There was either Internet Explorer for Windows users, Safari for Apple Macintosh users, and Opera Freehand for Linux/Unix users. And the standard for website optimization was usually just Internet Explorer, because it was the default web browser in most personal computers, and was by far the most commonly used program for the task.

Just a few short years later, everything has changed. Mozilla has developed and released the incredibly popular and versatile Firefox web browser, and it is close to eclipsing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for market supremacy. There are also many other web browsers creeping into the market, such as Google Chrome, Camino, Penguin and many others.

The worst part of web design then becomes optimizing a particular site for each and every web browser on the market. This can be an extremely frustrating thing to attempt, when one considers that the coding protocols for each browser are often completely contradictory to at least one of the others.

Often, a website that properly displays in Firefox will have severe formatting and CSS issues when loading into Internet Explorer. Likewise, Google Chrome often has problems loading pages optimized for Safari or Opera. These issues will vary for each and every website on the Internet. Attempting to resolve all of these issues can be a considerable headache, and is often much more trouble than it is worth.

Pick The Most Popular Web Browsers

Usually, if you keep your website coding clean, you should have few problems with loading a page into Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. This will at least ensure that the largest number of readers will be able to read and use your website at any given time.

Better To Test On A Mozilla Web Browser

For some reason, Mozilla web browsers, both Firefox and plain old Mozilla, are complex enough, and popular enough to help you optimize your site. Chances are, if a simple website loads into Firefox, you should have few problems with most web browsers.

Check Your Code Often

The problem also comes from the fact that web browsers update their software constantly, meaning that you need to routinely check your website with all of the different web browsers to check for compatibility errors.