Summary
Philip Chalmers investigates the bold claim that web pages should be viewable in any browser.
Author: Philip Chalmers
I've recently stumbled across a few pages which claim that any page should be viewable in any browser. Sorry if I'm slow, but I don't see that this is a realistic objective.
First, what counts as a browser? And what will count as a browser in a year or two? Jakob Nielsen thought it would be impossible for the same page to work in very limited devices such as mobile phones: End of Single-Design Pages?.
Even if we stick to desk-top systems, nobody knows how many browsers are out there. For example, the hoary ape lists goodness knows how many. It's impossible to test in all of them; look and see how many platforms you'd need! And where could you get reliable descriptions of what they can and can't do, including bug lists? In particular, how many of them crash if a developer uses any of the "graceful degradation" techniques which are becoming common? Netscape 4 is notorious for crashing on some perfectly valid HTML and CSS, and nobody claims to have an exhaustive list of reasons for Netscape 4 crashes.
Browsers which crash are plainly defective - the HTML standards say that a browser should just ignore anything it doesn't understand. Web developers can't be expected to take responsibility for the mistakes of browser / user agent suppliers.
Finally, let's compare web pages with television programmes:
- Nobody blames television programme makers if people can't view programmes with defective television sets.
- UK broadcasters dropped 405-line VHF transmissions decades ago. Viewers have had to upgrade to 625-line UHF sets.
- The UK government intends to switch off analogue television signals, "when digital television is available to all (those who have analogue television i.e. 99.4% of the population), affordable to all (including those on low or fixed incomes) and has been taken up by 95% of viewers." In other words, it intends to force a small minority to choose between upgrading and being left out in the cold.
Television programmes are as electronic as web pages. Why should web pages have to follow different rules?
Category: Usability.
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment1]
Thank you for the article, Philip. I think when people say, "viewable in any browser" they mean it's not optimised for a particular browser. There's no reason why web pages shouldn't be viewable in any browser, providing the browser doesn't have flaws. That's clearly not the case at the moment, and unlikely to ever be the case. Some browsers crash more regularly than others due to the number of bugs they have.
This is why I think standards are important. If web pages are designed using standards, and the content is separate from presentation, then the content should be viewable in any browser. That's not to say that every device will be able to render the content the same, but it should at least be usable. If all pages were standards compliant, it would make it much easier for the manufacturers of user agents to ensure they work correctly. At the moment, they have to deal with tag soup, as well as valid markup. I don't think anyone would hold a developer responsible for browser bugs, but I haven't had a chance to read the links in your article.
Posted by Gez on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment2]
I think Philip has a very good point, if a little literal
. It really isn't possible to cater for all browsers on all OS' and I can't believe that anyone really thinks it is a viable option. Surely in order to achieve this, design would have to take a retrograde step back to a Doctype that is capable of this- say...HTML 3.2?
I support the general idea behind the campaign though, which seems more geared to Gez' point that its saying they don't actively restrict a certain browser rather than that their site can be viewed literally on any browser.
It will be very nice when browsers actually do implement standards correctly though- but I think that time is a *long* way off.
Posted by Kev on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment3]
http://anybrowser.us/ says:
That looks like a description of the Netscape 4 experience to me.
So I tried looking at this page in Netscape 4.51 - no, Gez, I'm not getting at you:
* The page bg was black, so I couldn't read the main text (also black).
* The links were all blue, so the top menu bar ("Skip navigation", "Home", etc.) was almost unreadable - I'd probably have missed it if I didn't already know it was there.
* The only readable bits were the existing comments and the "add comment" form.
Yet NN 4 still has a measurable market share and NN 4.51 was released in 1999. What does this site look like in some of the museum pieces on the hoary ape list http://hoary.org/browse ?
Of course I'm not getting at Gez - I know this site is valid XHTML and CSS, and I'm sure that it works well in the top 3 or 4 accessibility aids. A page I'm working on is an unreadable dog's breakfastin NN 4.51. Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
And I don't think I'm being over-literal about "any browser" - see the quote at the top of this comment.
Have a nice week-end, everybody!
Posted by Philip Chalmers on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment4]
If I remember correctly - this site looked like a dogs dinner in Netscape 4 at the start of 2002 when Netscape 4 was still widely used. I wrote to gez to let him know and he said he didn't care what it looked like providing the content could be accessed. I thought it was a careless attititude back then but it seems he's taken his eye off the ball. Ironic considering his comment here.
Posted by anonymous on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment5]
To Quote Gez:
...enough said on the Netscape 4x front
Posted by JoePublic on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment6]
Sorry it's taken so long to reply to this, but I've been away for an extended weekend with no access to the Internet.
Philip Chalmers said:
Anonymous said:
You're both correct. I stopped testing Juicy Studio in Netscape 4 a couple of years ago, but out of interest downloaded Netscape 4 to see if there was anything I could reasonably do about the appearance of this site in Netscape 4. I'm more interested in making sure this site is standards compliant and accessible to the widest range of modern user agents. I also stand by my statement that any site should be viewable in any browser, providing it's possible to work around the browser's flaws in a way that isn't detrimental to a site being standards compliant. I've rearranged the CSS a little to allow Netscape 4 visitors to at least be able to view the content. The contrast of the links on the banner is still not adequate to be considered accessible, but other than that, the site is now viewable in Netscape 4. Thank you for bringing the issue to my attention.
Posted by Gez on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment7]
I once saw a site that produced a view of you site as seen by all types of browsers know to man, these were then sent to you / displayed as images so you cold see the effect without trying to have the browsers installed on your own machine(s). Anyone else see this? can tell me where it its?
Posted by Robert Campbell on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment8]
I'm not sure if it's the company you're thinking of, but BrowserCam offer that service: http://www.browsercam.com
I'm not sure how good the service is, but their ratio of "click here" links is pretty impressive. Maybe someone should send them a view of how their own site looks in links only mode:
Ironic, considering their strap line is "so you'll be 100% sure your web pages look good-and work right-on any platform".
Posted by Gez on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment9]
Where did you download Netscape 4? Is there a place where you can download previous versions of browsers?
Posted by Ed on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment10]
Evolt maintain a really good collection of old browsers: http://browsers.evolt.org
Posted by Gez on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment11]
Even though it is the task of the browser designer to ensure that their products to adhere to software standards, what of those cases (Microsoft comes to mind) where the designers ADD capability beyond the standards, and website designers begin to include these enhancements in their pages?
Posted by Lou O'Quin on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment12]
I'm not really sure what you mean, Lou. Do you mean developers adding proprietary markup to their pages? The problem with browser manufacturers adding proprietary elements that are not defined in standards is that developers may come to rely on them if they're not aware that other browsers do not support them. The <blink> tag from Netscape, and the <marquee> tag from Internet Explorer spring to mind.
Posted by Gez on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment13]
I think the point of "any browser" isn't to force testing with and/or special accomodation of EVERY browser but rather to be viewable/operable using any type of well-designed standards-based browser, be it graphical OR text. This can also be accomplished by providing a simple "text-only" version with link on the main page for people using text browsers (I'm using one at the moment, as a matter of fact - it's great when all you need is text - it's really fast. This page seems to render and function quite well with text only - nice work.)
If a page is simply useless in a text-type browser, a description of the site contents in plain text would give blind and text-only surfers the chance to at least imagine what the site looks like.
All of the preceeding does, of course, require that site developers care whether say, the blind or those with access only to text browsers can make any sense of a site. Perhaps consideration for all will someday be the rule on the web, and not the exception.
Posted by elltee on
[viewable-in-any-browser.php#comment14]
Yes I think it's probably unreasonable to suggest a page be perfectly compatible with every browser.
What a page needs to be compatible with are current web standards.
If said page is, it will render virtually the same in every browser, PROVIDED that browser is also compliant with current standards.
Here are some of the most popular browsers out there. As far as I know all but one (in their most recent version) is standards compliant...
Camino (Mozilla)
Epiphany (Gecko-based for GNOME)
Galeon (Mozilla based for GNOME)
K-Meleon (Gecko based for Windows)
Konqueror (KTML based for KDE)
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox (Gecko based)
Mozilla Seamonkey (Gecko based)
Netscape (Gecko based prior to v 8)
Opera
Safari (KHTML Based)
You get 5 guesses which one is not compliant and the first 4 don't count..
Posted by Scott on