Resources for Web Development Students @ Robin’s Blog

Checking Sites for Consistency

One of the really tough parts of web development is getting your site layout consistent in multiple browsers on multiple platforms (Windows (98, 2000, XP), Macintosh, Linux, etc.), with different resolutions when you’re using CSS. You must ensure that your site looks good in various versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, Safari, and Konqueror on multiple platforms at different resolutions (800×600, 1024×768, etc.). The instructor workstation, at the front of the classroom, has IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and various other PC based browsers. The classroom Macintosh has Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Camino and various other browsers.

Checking your site for consistency is a time consuming process and requires access to different computers and operating systems. Access to multiple computer systems may not be an option for new web developers, as equipment costs can be high. BrowserCam’s Screen Capture Service lets you submit multiple URL’s, choose the browsers and operating systems you want to see, and in about a minute returns screen captures of your webpage loaded in the different browsers and operating systems you selected. BrowserCam has been kind enough to offer this service to students in our class for free. I will announce the username and password in class this afternoon; if you miss class, be sure to ask me for the access information.

Once you start to check your sites in different browsers you are going to find a lot of inconsistencies. Lorelle on WordPress has written an article on Fixing Browsers: Bugs and Hacks and pulled together some excellent resources on the subject. Over the weekend, students who have completed at least the CSS unit of the XHTML book should review this article, the accompanying sites and the handouts that I will provide you with today in class. I would also recommend that you spend time at CSS-Discuss for more information on browser inconsistencies. Google’s blog search is an excellent tool for finding CSS help. Try searching for “conditional comments css” or “css hacks”.

Validating Sites

All of your projects should validate as XHTML Transitional. I would recommend that you read Making Documents XHTML Compliant before you begin the validation process.