Netscape & IE Web Design

[HackinCowboy]

Does anyone have any good documentation on developing sites for both IE and Netscape. I hate how you can create an awesome design in IE and then have it look terrible in Netscape. I see that some sites are able to do this though. Are they just creating multiple pages. One set for IE and one for Netscape, or are they coding it properly.

[aym]

Check this guide:
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/abdesign.html

[mairving]

It is not all that difficult really. The main thing that NS doesn't like are things like:

• Unclosed tags ( <TD>)
• Table cells with nothing in them (<TD><TD>) as opposed to <<TD>& nbsp ;<TD>)
• Too many things (<TD colspan="3">) when there are actually only two columns.
• Problems caused by text boxes in forms
• Forgetting to set the margins for NS marginwidth and marginheight
• Using CSS not supported by NS

Those are probably the biggest except for the use of some javascript and DHTML. It is really not all that difficult once you get the hang of it to know what works and what doesn't. I usually build pages to look and function in NS 4.7, anything prior to that is fruitless.

[HackinCowboy]

Yea I know the big things not supported, but every once in a while I come across something that isn't supported in Netscape and it's somewhat difficult to find out just exactly what it is. Thanks for info though.

[ScurrilousPrune]

If I were you I'd get both browsers just to see what the pages would look like and also if you're making a website, you could make a redirect script that will take the user to a certain page based on their browser and/or screen size. Just search HTML tutorial sites and Javascript sites for redirect scripts. HTH

[tx2Step]

Cross browser design information can be found at several sites. I used to build as best I could for middle of the road, but have decided that Netscape isn't worth building to. Recent records of visitors to sites I manage indicate only 6 percent of the people visiting use Netscape.

Nonetheless go to www.stars.com for some very simple cross browser info and do a search on yahoo or whatever seach engine for cross browser html. There are a few simple things you can do but Netscape is so limited compared to Explorer that dissatisfaction will be a constant. It has been for me anyway.

I keep several tips and tidbits at my site at www.outdoorwebdesign.com about keeping things simple. All the fancy trimmings are nice but if people can't see your pages as they are intended they and your work are wasted. But happy mediums do exist.

Those mediums are just better with IE.