I have just been looking at a web page I was referred to for a blogging product and it looked terrible in my Firefox browser. I switched to IE and it was fine so I had a look at the source code of the page. The reason for the problem immediately became apparent when I saw the code that said the page was generated with Microsoft Frontpage. I ran the page through the World Wide Web page validator and it had 320 coding errors! So why is Frontpage a problem? Well, a couple of reasons really. First of all, and most important, Frontpage is a Microsoft product designed to write web pages for Internet Explorer with a complete and total disregard for all other browsers. There are quite a few of these out there too including Firefox, Opera, Flock and the Apple browser Safari..........(Go to Read More)

All the browsers I have mentioned are called "compliant browsers" in that they render pages in accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium's code standards. Microsoft's IE does not and hence the problems.

IE has long been the disaster area of a web developer's life. The golden rule is to "code for Firefox and hack for IE". In other words, code in a compliant manner that will work across all browsers and then throw some additional code in to make it work in IE as well.

The other problem is that if you are using Frontpage for your web pages I can bet that you are using it in visual or WYSIWYG mode. Consequently you can't see the code that Frontpage is producing behind the scenes. Generally, it is verbose and it also generates several coding errors because of its IE focus.

The bottom line here folks is that you have visitors from all walks of life visiting your site. If it's a sales page they are seeing, the question really becomes whether or not you want to demonstrate a total lack of professionalism to a substantial percentage of your visitors?

Investing in a professional web developer is just that, an investment and not a cost. You will reap the benefit hundreds of times over because you will have quality pages with quality code viewable in all browsers.

Your comments are welcome..


Cheers,

 


Ric Raftis
Written on Sunday, 22 February 2009 00:00 by Ric Raftis

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