Test Your Website for Cross Browser Compatibility

Here at Yoko Co., we build websites for a wide variety of clients, whose target audiences use a wide variety of web browsers.  Sure, in a perfect world, we’d all use the latest version of Chrome or Firefox (or Safari, or… IE10 – maybe?).

However, in many cases – particularly with larger organizations – security, IT and network restrictions force the use of older web browsers (often Internet Explorer 7 or 8).  So, fact is, one way or another, everyone who looks at your website won’t necessarily be using the latest & greatest technology.

You need to know what your audience might be seeing when they hit your website.  Maybe that important Call-To-Action button is getting messed up in IE.  Maybe your contact forms are getting jumbled together in Firefox.

The point: You should test your website on different browsers.  

Even if you’re not a web designer, this is worth doing.  If you or your web team tested your site at launch, great – But remember, as you have modified it, or added new content, you may have also inadvertently broken something that was working.  Or perhaps the new content you added wasn’t cross-browser compatible to begin with.

And if you don’t have multiple web browsers installed?  There are a number of cross-browser testing tools available online, but here’s the one I keep coming back to:
Adobe Browser Lab

• It’s free (you just have to sign up for a free adobe.com account)
• It’s fast
• There’s a wide browser selection.

So check your websites!  Unless there are special circumstances, we typically shoot for full functionality on IE7 and up. I think it’s OK to lose a rounded corner here and there, or experience very minor aesthetic differences on older browsers, but the important thing is that it works like it should.