Why is cross browser compatibility important?

Today there are more than hundreds of web browsers known around the globe. Despite the existence of web standards all these browsers work slightly differently. This is where the web designers have to implement their projects in a way that they are cross browser compatible. In  this article I’d like to give the explanation for these differences and how they affect browser functionality.

What is web browser compatibility? When a web site is totally cross browser compatible, it will look the same way in all the popular web browsers without distortions and errors. The most widely used web browsers today are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera. Here is the browser statics to check their popularity and prevalence.

Each browser puts HTML, JavaScript and CSS into use a little bit differently. Some of the difference can slightly distort the website appearance, the others can easily break the entire website. The situation gets worse with a variety of operating systems people use. The images and texts can be broken and unreadable. Therefore, web designers have to deal with the compatibility issues to create a stunning, web standards-compliant and functioning web design. Evidently, it would be a hard work to achieve 100% compatibility in all the existing browsers, but to create a page which would function in the popular browsers is a realistic job. Why is this possible? The fact is that the commonly used browsers have got a sort of rules by following which your site will work more or less consistently. It’s highly recommended to check the website for code validation. There are many free online services to do that. For example you can validate your code at http://validator.w3.org.

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