Cross Browser Compatibility: The most influencing factor of a Website

A website now a days is a basic credibility proof for any business. There is no reason for a business not to have a website now a days. Informational, E-Commerce, Educational, Travel, Automotive etc., people always look for the website link when provided with the business card. A business which does not have a website is less likely to qualify for customer preference.

Compatibility Issues

Having a website is not enough now a days. The website should function uniformly across different configurations and settings of different browsers. Their major compatibility issues are due to the following:

• Multiple browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Mobile browsers)
• Multiple Versions of Browsers
• Multiple Operating Systems
• Multiple Screen Sizes and Access Devices

A website may have been developed and tested in a particular browser. It may display perfectly in one Browser but the components disassociate when viewed in another browser. This may disturb the functioning of important functionality. Customers are less likely to use such websites particularly in this market where multiple websites are available providing the same functionality.

The trend of mobile browsing has made it imperative for websites to go mobile. Responsive Layout is the cheapest and the easiest solution to this. This calls for cross browser compatibility checking of the websites on mobile browsers.

Compatibility Checklist

Whether it is an informational website, a basic catalog website, a social networking website or a complicated B2B Marketplace website, before deploying it live, ensure its cross browser compatibility for the following:

• HTML, HTML5 and CSS code validation
• Characters support, character encoding
• Layout display of the pages in different resolution
• Image alignment
• Text alignment, font display
• Java script and Jquery functionality
• Ajax updations
• Image rendering and display layout on mobile browsers
• Navigation accessibility on mobile browsers

Know a fact:

W3C states the Web Standards, which describe how the elements should be coded. Deviation while following these standards creates performance and display inconsistency for the Website across browsers. Adhering to these predefined web standards greatly improves website visibility and its accessibility eventually increasing its user traffic.

Conclusion:

It is practically impossible to achieve 100% compatibility throughout all browsers. Manual cross browser testing is a matter of time and money. Paid tools can be used for those browsers which have high browser dependent functionality. However, free tools also verify cross browser compatibility to a sufficient extent. They can be used for ensuring the basic code and display issues.