All Browsers Are Not Created Equal

You should realise that every web browser has its own unique personality. Which is a polite way of saying that your web site will look slightly differently on Firefox vs. Chrome vs. Safari vs. Internet Explorer. I won’t bore you with the reasons why. Suffice it to say that it is borne out of the intense competition between the various players when the Internet was young.

The reason it concerns you, the web site owner, is that it affects the price of your site. It does this in a couple of ways. First, certain effects are much harder to achieve in one browser over another. For example, the very popular shadowed box effect is not supported by Internet Explorer 9. Secondly, each browser has interpreted ‘the rules’ differently for how various page elements should look and work. And finally, like every software, each browser has its share of bugs.

The good news? You can overcome all these challenges with hard work and some sleight of hand; but sleight of hand costs. And more good news: all browsers are now becoming far more standardised. (On the other hand, web browsers are now being asked to do way more stuff so challenges will continue.)

The site builder must budget a certain amount of time for building and testing compatibility and ‘harmonisation’&#8212which simply means making sure that every page looks as similar as possible. The more complex the pages, the more time this takes. On really large sites? As much as one third of the site budget may be needed for testing. Really. In other words, some fancy feature which you think represents only 5% of your budget may actually add 20% to the price after you account for the added hassle of making sure everything works across all browsers.