Web Design Tips: Compatibility with Older Browsers

As web technology advances and development standards evolve some web browsers are falling behind. Many lack the ability to support new technologies and file types or even provide the best available user experience. These lagging browsers put ecommerce businesses in something of a quandary. How do you offer customers the best possible user experience without leaving some of those customers behind?

In this edition of Web Design Tips, a recurring Practical eCommerce feature, I will (1) introduce and explain the trouble with old and noncompliant browsers and (2) describe two ways to manage browser compatibility issues, particularly for older versions of Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer web browser.

Thankfully there are a lot of web browsers available to suit the tastes and web surfing habits of just about any consumer. I like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. But I have friends who swear by Maxthon, Opera 9.6, or Safari (Safari 4 does have some nice features). And about 44 percent of Internet users surf using one of three available versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).

While I like all of that variety, having so many browser options can be troublesome for web designers and developers since each browser could render your web site differently. What's more, as browsers change and improve over time they begin to manage JavaScript, deal with server calls, or render images differently, making it even more complex to design websites that look good on most browsers. And while Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome all do a great job of keep users up to date, some browsers don't offer automatic updates, so that some users are still puttering around the web in IE 6. And this is the problem with older browsers.

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