Post #23 in the Blogathon
I don't have any screen shots of what my old layouts looked like in Firefox, because, well… I had no idea what it was, and I'm sure there are still people who don't know what it is. Basically, when you click on that little icon to open "the internet", you're actually opening a browser that lets you see the internet.
Okay, why am I explaining what a browser is, you ask? Obviously, this is an article about web design, the people who read it better darn well know what a browser is! But you know, I've considered myself a web designer (though by no means a particularly good one) for a long long time. And I would say that only for about half that time have I known the difference between "Internet Explorer" and "Firefox".
Your website is made of code. Again, you may not know this, if like me, you used FrontPage or Dreamweaver or another program that does the coding for you. I think these are great programs, but if you want to get serious about website design, you need to get into the code. Different browsers look at the code differently and interpret it differently.
It's like if you tell John to draw a ball, he might draw a baseball. If you ask Paul to draw a ball, he might draw a football. It's kind of like that, except that you can't put into your code "draw a ball", because it won't actually work.
So, if you want to make sure that everyone is seeing your website the way you want it to look, you're going to want to test it in different browsers. Usually, if you test your site in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, it should look alright in most other browsers as well. You probably already have Internet Explorer on your computer and are using it now. You can download Firefox for free and install it and start using it right away. It's all pretty easy.
But once you have it installed, it gets pretty scary. Using Firefox is easy, but looking at your website, you may be in for a rude awakening. Things won't be positioned where you want them to be, things won't show up that should, things will show up that wouldn't. Like I said, scary stuff.
I can't actually tell you how to fix your website so it works in all browsers, because all layouts are different. One way is to make sure that you have valid code. Plug your website address into that website and fix any mistakes it tells you about. This may solve a few problems with your site, but probably not all of them.
Now, if you've made your site readable and usable, but maybe the layout isn't exactly right, you can stop. Even people who know what they're doing with coding will get pretty frustrated trying to make sure their layout works in all browsers. If it's your first time, give yourself a pat on the back and take a break.
But maybe you're like me, and that one pixel difference is a big difference! I'm a terrible nit picker, and if things aren't exactly right, it drives me crazy.
There are a lot of fun things you can do with Internet Explorer, like make things glow or change scroll bar colours, and this just doesn't happen in Firefox. There's just no way you can get these effects to show up, unfortunately. You can still leave them in so IE users can see them, but that's about all.
Really, the best thing you can do is just play around with your layout. Move around parts of the code, take things out, add things. Eventually, it will work. The more you code and make layouts, the easier it will be to make your site look right in all browsers.
