Every Web designer has that moment of grace at least once. A moment when you look at the layout, the colors, the text, and the images - and the page just works. Everything is just perfect. I had that happen recently. I remember how ecstatic I was. This was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or at least so I thought.

Then I pulled up the page under Internet Explorer 7.0 and realized that my Michaelangelo was actually a Picasso on a really bad day.

I'd seen better looking Orcs.

So I emitted a high pitch whine of pure frustration, and then told my wife not to wait up.

I wasn't leaving the computer for awhile. A long, long while.

Welcome to Web development - 21^st Century style.

Typical development methodology:

• Design and build under Firefox, Opera, Safari or some other standards compliant browser.
• Check your code under Internet Explorer.
• Cry, whine, hit things, pray for strength.
• Dumb the code down until it works.

Frequently, the fixes needed to make Internet Explorer happy will hurt one or more other major browser.

So then that leads into the following development path:

• Cry, whine, hit things, pray for strength.
• Repeat until the majority of commonly used browsers are happy enough with your site to go into production.

This is a tough thing to experience, so what I'd like to do in this blog is just make some recommendations for those who either care for and feed Websites, or who run ministries that depend on them.

Things to remember:

1) The Web is a mess.

This is primarily because there are several commonly used browsers and they all render pages differently.

Just because your Website looks good under Firefox, doesn't mean it will open under Internet Explorer. In fact, Web developers (me included) have a theory that Microsoft intentionally renders pages badly that aren't built using it's ASP framework.

Sometimes, but not often, IE looks better than Firefox or Safari.

Regardless, you have to check your site under at least Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox 2.0 and higher, Safari 3.0 and higher, and Opera 9.0 and higher.

Those are the most commonly used browsers, and if you want your site to be maximumly accessible, you will need to support at least this set. The browsers should also be tested under at least Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Mac OS X. Linux would be good too, but not as a critical.

Okay, you don't have a room full of testing computers, so how are you going to accomplish this? Easy, there is a free Website called www.browsershots.org to do just this.

Browsershots will give you screen captures of your site under up to 22 combinations of browser and operating system.

Should you check your site?

Definitely. Even relatively simple, static HTML has been known to come out differently on different browser/operating system combinations.

2) Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer - any version.

Internet Explorer 7 is a train wreck. Internet Explorer 6 is a full-blown nuclear catastrophe. The limitations of these two browsers are conspiring to hold back Internet development. I can not begin to tell you the number of times I've put cool features into a site, only to tear them out because IE 6 couldn't cope.

The time is now to just say no.

Spread the word, the best browser is Firefox. It's free, and you can get it here .

Safari is also a good browser, as is Opera, so you do have choices.

There is just no good reason to keep using an inferior product when there are better options for free.

Just remember - the limitations of IE especially hurt Orthodox sites. Orthodoxy is a visually rich experience, which should translate well to the Web. However, the Microsoft browsers limit Webmaster creativity in trying to translate some measure of the Orthodox experience into the Web environment.

Download a real browser today, and tell your friends, your relatives, and all of your cousins to do the same. The sooner we get the majority of the Internet community away from Internet Explorer, the sooner we can stop dumbing our code down.

3) The cooler it is, the greater the chances it will break something.

When things spin on a Website, or slideshows transition pictures using a fade effect, or text is hidden/exposed based on a click - I often hear this referred to as ‘Flash.' Nine times out of ten, these effects are not produced by ‘Flash.'

Flash is a proprietary file type generated by a custom authoring tool. Authoring Flash is far from easy, and commissioning custom Flash animation is an expensive thing.

Most effects on Websites are actually produced by Java script coding. The good news is Java snippets or plugins are widely available, and they can do exceptionally cool things.

For example, the slideshow on the frontpage of www.myocn.net and the pagepeel ad on www.orthodoxbiz.com are examples of Java scripts doing really cool animations.

The downside of Java is that it can crater older browsers. It can also frequently not work with Internet Explorer. Especially authoring, blogging, and security tools that use Java will often cause IE to choke even the latest release.

Another downside is that while two pieces of Java code might work individually, trying to combine them on a single page can cause a Java conflict.

Only, not in all browsers. Firefox may parse the code correctly, only to see IE tank, so it is critical to test, test, and test if using advanced functions.

But in terms of affordability and time-to-market, Java is not going anywhere, regardless of its limitations. Using a Joomla environment, I can get Java plugins that do excellent things for free that are ready to use immediately. Developing a Flash-equivalent function costs time and money which most ministries just don't have.

So, the moral of the story is simply this. Decide how much cross-browser compatibility means to you, and then square that with your selection of capabilities for your site. Orthodox Christian Network is fairly basic, and will render on almost any browser on almost any operating system.

This is by design - OCN is a universal ministry which has to be open to as many people as possible. There is no Java embedded in the template, and only some Java used for the frontpage slideshow.

The more cool stuff you want, the more you are going to freeze out people using older operating systems and older browsers. Which brings us to the last point.

4) Do you really need to support Konqueror 3.5 running on a Linux platform, or the AOL proprietary browser, or Safari 1.3?

I make a hard and fast rule, if a browser can get popular enough to actually crack 1%, then I'll be somewhat concerned if it breaks my design.

Browser Usage for November 2007

Obviously, if IE 6 or 7, the later versions of Firefox, and the later versions of Safari have issues then you have to sit up and take notice. But, on most projects, I'm not going to trash my design and put cool features on the sideline because a browser run by less than 1 person out of a 100 chokes on it. To me, that just isn't reasonable.

Now for really broad ministries, perhaps the standard is different, but for most the price for supporting all browsers/all platforms is simply too prohibitive in terms of cost and lost functionality.

There are developments within Web design which may help alleviate many of these problems. However, the browser issues will be with us for some time to come. That's just the nature of electronic ministry right now.

And may the Holy Trinity have mercy on us because of it!

Glen Chancy is CIO for corfun.com and publisher of Orthodox Biz. You can contact him here .

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 [The Mess Called the Web]

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