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It is commonly known that kryptonite is to Superman as the browser is to the web designer. If browsers could render a beautiful web design without any bugs or mishaps, then the life of a web designer would be much better. Unfortunately, a web designer has to spend as much time troubleshooting to make their designs work in a browser as they did designing it in the first place. Web designers everywhere, it is time to re-think the way we work with the browser. Print design has had centuries to perfect itself and explore all the best practices. While it does not vary much in position due to its rather fixed nature, it can explore a wide variety of color, contrast, texture, and press quality. Changing these variables will change the nature of the message it is trying to convey. Just like printing machines and poor quality paper have the ability to ruin printed designs, so does the browser have the ability to destroy web designs. But unlike the print world, web doesn’t have centuries of history to rely on. It hasn’t had time to become perfect and explore all the methods of handling inconsistencies. Web designers are not allowed quality control when it comes to paper and ink products. We don’t get to decide which browser a user will use when they go to look at our custom web design. We are at their mercy. We are at the browser’s mercy. In the printing world, the designer has some semblance of control over how others will see their product. Browsers have competition the same way any company in the world has competition. There would not be a need for multiple browsers if the Internet had some type of standards organization to force them all to be the same. Instead, we would have one single awesome browser that everyone could rely on to be the same all the time. But just our websites are fighting for users, so are browsers. That means they are all trying to out-do each other with new built in features or faster download speeds to attract us. Some browsers are built for big, bold designs with large files and images that usually take more time to download. Other browsers were built more for rendering text documents. As we move into the next decade and the Internet progresses, web browsers are going to try harder and harder to differentiate themselves. The more different they become, the harder it will become to make our custom web design look the same on all of them. We need to find a better way to handle browser compatibility. We no longer have the ability to make our designs look the same on every browser, unless those designs are super boring. Browsers of the future will force us to re-think the way we design our websites to handle browser differences. One possible solution to designing for different browsers is to give your client a choice. They can either have an average design that looks the same across all browsers, or they can have a super stellar design that looks exceptional only on the most exceptional browsers. Show your client some Photoshop mockups of what an average design would look like in Opera, and then show them what their site could look like in Firefox. Another idea is to create a generic template that shows the differences between low and high quality browsers, and use that to show multiple clients how different elements will look in each one. While gradients, custom fonts, background images or animations have the ability to enhance your design, they certainly don’t make your design. Some of the things you will need to consider when designing for different browsers include (1) knowing your audience and what their browser preferences are; (2) maintaining your brand colors, logos and styles; and (3) maintain the meaning of your site, which is completely separate from custom web design and style.
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