April 29th, 2009
We’ve all experienced it – a web page looks great in Firefox and then completely falls apart in Internet Explorer. What’s the deal?
Web design is very different from print design. Designers who create a printed page layout can do so knowing exactly how it will look once it’s printed. They can pick a color or font and know that it will appear the same in pring. Web designers can’t because there are many variables which will affect how a page will render. The two primary categories of factors are:
- User’s computer system and preferences. Computers come with operating systems (the top three are Windows, Mac, and Linux). Each of these operating systems uses different display settings and color profiles – colors on your web page could well look aqua on a Mac and dark green on a PC. Screen resolution also affects the way a page displays: screen resolution of 800×600 for example, will show everything much bigger than a larger screen resolution of 1024×768. Even fonts are not uniform – if a user doesn’t have a font on their computer that a web page is coded in, text will default to whatever the user has set in their preferences. Throw in different computer monitors with their own display settings into the mix, and you can see that what you see is dependent on your hardware and software.
- Browser differences. As if individual operating systems, software, hardware, and user preferences weren’t enough, there is a world of difference in how different web browsers interpret code (or not!). In the early days of web browsing, there was no standard code, which led to pages working on some browsers and not on others. Today most browsers use a standard code, but some older browsers do not. In addition, like any piece of software, browsers can have “bugs” – their own little quirks that are unpredictable. Top it off with the fact that every browser also allows users to set additional individual display preferences.
So, you can see, it’s not 100% possible to design a web page that will look the same in every browser and on every operating system!
Filed under Tools & Tips, Web Design, Website Health & Accessibility | Comment (0)
April 6th, 2009
We have many clients who ask us to build music into their websites, usually something on the home page that they find uplifting or think their visitors may find appealing. We always advise our clients to think more than twice about doing this. Why? Not because we don’t like music, but for some very good customer-centric reasons:
- Load time: many people still use older machines and browsers to go online. Playing music will decrease your website’s overall performance, especially when someone is on an older or slower machine. Result: visitors won’t want to come back, if they’ve stuck around long enough for the pages to load in the first place.
- Personal Taste: not everyone likes the same kind of music (no matter how much we love it!) or even likes music at all. Result: visitors will be turned off and leave before they’ve even begun exploring what your site has to offer.
- Intrusiveness: many people nowadays multi-task when they’re using their computers. They may be working on a Word document, editing a photo, listening to a CD or an online radio station, and web surfing all at the same time. We all know how annoying it can be when we’re listening to our music at home and our neighbor decides to treat us to their favorite tunes while working outside or in their garage. Result: Visitors will be annoyed to have the music they’re already listening to interrupted by yours and will leave your site ASAP.
- Browser issues: not all browsers support playing music equally. Your music may not play or may crash your visitor’s browser. Result: no more visits to your website!
- Unprofessional: how many of your favorite websites or your competitor’s websites play music (if they’re not a music website)? ‘Nough said!
If you are dead set on having music on your website, we’d suggest an “opt-in” approach: have a link your visitor can click to listen to the music by choice. Then check your website statistics periodically and evaluate how popular the feature is for your particular visitors.
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