I have been reading the Transcending CSS book mentioned in an earlier post - it’s an excellent book - and it’s nice to know it’s not just me that struggles with the outdated ideas of some clients that the presentation of a website should be identical across the main browser platforms (including Mac IE5.5, although this is largely considered an obsolete platform by most agencies). My own view is that the presentation should be as close as possible, but, with so many browser variants and no actual control of how the site visitor sets up their viewing configuration (using their own fonts, different screen widths, etc, etc) we need to accommodate this fluidity and not attempt to override it. Writing on this subject back in February, Nate Koechley of Yahoo! puts it very succinctly:

Support does not mean that everybody gets the same thing. Expecting two users using different browser software to have an identical experience fails to embrace or acknowledge the heterogeneous essence of the Web. In fact, requiring the same experience for all users creates a barrier to participation. Availability and accessibility of content should be our key priority.

– Nate Koechley
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/gbs.html

Koechly’s article makes it clear that it is neither possible nor desirable for people accessing Web content using different browsing technologies or devices to expect the to receive the same design. After all, a person will have a different experience browsing the Web using a large desktop monitor than someone using the small screen of a handheld PDA or mobile phone. Extending that notion to browser versions is only one small step.

The challenge when creating a brief for a project is to be as inclusive as possible, but also realise that the range of support provided for various devices is something that needs to be defined and not an assumption that all devices will be supported by default once the site is developed. Each viewing platform will require its own considerations in the CSS and mark-up to ensure suitable presentation, and assuming that a potentially infinite array of viewing platforms will all be supported is unrealistic (not to mention expensive). Most of our clients work on the basis of “it should work on Macs and PCs” which often includes FireFox and Internet Explorer (on the PC) and Safari and IE5.5 (on the Mac). But what of Opera? And which version of IE on the PC (now that IE7 has been released and is a mandatory download)?

Fortunately, the major browsers listed above are similar in their interpretation of the fundamental styling capabilities of a web page and this can allow us to create the client’s desired homogeneity across the platforms, but the CSS specification goes much further and allows us to create a better experience for people with more compliant or capable browsers. Unfortunately, these features are rarely used as clients are often looking at the lowest common denominator instead of a graceful degrading approach that allows us to create the preferred experience which also degrades nicely so that people using other configurations can still access the content.

If you want the best solution, make sure you find an agency or freelancer who understands the principles of CSS from both a visual and a technical viewpoint. It’s one thing to be able to recreate a design using CSS from a technical standpoint, but it’s another to be able to understand the visual goals and bridge the gap between concept and representation. Remember that even the design itself should encompass the capabilities of the underlying (CSS) technology and not simply assume that the design can be translated.