Browsers, Operating Systems, and Screen Resolutions

By Adam Stitzer

Seriously, why can’t they all just make it easy on Web Designers, and find some common ground.

The fact is that there are many different browsers available today. Only a select few are very common (IE, Firefox, Opera, etc.), but other browsers such as Konquerer, Safari, and Netscape are also available. Each of these browsers displays content in a different way. Among each browser type, there are multiple versions that we must account for as well. Most of the earlier versions lack the support of Javascript and CSS, but nearly all have caught up at this point in time. The trend to notice is that as new web technologies have surfaced, new browsers or browser versions have been developed to support these new technologies.

There are a few ways to ensure that your website will work for as many browsers as possible. First, make sure you are designing your sites to common standards such as HTML, XML, and CSS. Secondly, you have to test your work in the most common browsers first. These make up for over 95% of the browsers that websites are viewed in. Finally, you must tweak your site so that it works in older versions still commonly used, and in whatever other browsers you consider important.

Another common problem for web designers is determining the proper screen resolution to design websites for. The statistics suggest that about 70% of users are using a 1024x768 or higher resolution, and about 30% are using an 800x600 resolution. The common solution is to design for 800x600 users and just leave it at that. Another solution is to design for 1024x768 users and forget about the other 30% using 800x600. They can scroll over if they need to right? Wrong. You do not want users to have to scroll over to see important content. If you choose this solution, please remember to use that extra 200 pixels for content that is not very important, because 30% of the people viewing your website will not scroll over to see it. Perhaps the best solution would be to design your websites independent of screen resolution. Make it stretch, squeeze, or whatever it needs to do to fit any resolution. The way to do this is not to specify widths in absolute units such as pixels, but instead use percentages.

Another important factor is the Operating System running the browser. Internet Explorer on Mac OS X is very different than Internet Explorer on Windows. This is not usually considered a very important factor, because less than 10% of the people on the internet use a Mac. However, that number is changing every day. It is also important to note at this moment that Microsoft has officially decided to stop development on Internet Explorer for Mac OS.