Cross-Browser Problems: an example

This example is a real Web site we came across which illustrates the dangers of assuming that because a page looks OK in one browser, it will look OK in all browsers. The name of the site has been obscured, because we are not out to embarrass anyone, but otherwise the screenshots show precisely how the site looks in various browsers.
     The first screenshot is from Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Mac. To the right is an oblong area with a background colour slightly lighter than the surrounding page: this is a Java applet with upwards scrolling the green text. The graphic at the top left is an animated GIF. It all looks fine, doesn’t it?
     Now let’s see how it looks in iCab (a good Mac browser in development in Germany). The design is a bit disrupted, the background colour is now white leaving an ugly blue fringe around the rotating .GIF, and the applet’s background no longer fits with the rest of the page—but on the other hand, at least the text is readable.
     The situation is quite different if you look at the page in Netscape 4.7 (and remember, between a quarter and a third of Net surfers use some variety of Netscape). Now the Java applet has become a complete mess; some versions of Netscape display nothing at all here. Even worse, the main body text has become almost totally illegible. Faced with a page like this, most surfers will immediately go somewhere else—and if you were wanting to sell something via the site, that’s a customer leaving.

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