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AFP Audioconference Q&A: Software Compatibility with Browsers
On January 14, NPA's Rick Christ led an audioconference for the the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) entitled "Auditing Your Nonprofit Web Site." The following question is from an audience member: Q: You mentioned and included in your presentation notes that web sites look different on different browsers. My organization uses Microsoft Front Page to manage our web site. Are certain software programs more compatible with the different browsers than others? If so, which ones are they? A: I asked our own web developer this question, and here is her answer: “An example of a page that 'looks good' in IE but not Netscape is http://www.cuttingedgebankcard.com/. IE is much more forgiving that Netscape. In this example the asp code is before the <html> tag. Therefore, Netscape does not recognize it as asp code. I have also found that some versions of Netscape are very sensitive about the </table> tag. In some cases if this flag is forgotten, Netscape will not load the page, where IE will give you the page the way it thinks it should look. There have been sites that load perfectly fine in Netscape but they take longer than loading the site in IE. www.dell.com is an example - it takes twice as long (6 secs via DSL) in Netscape than in IE (3 secs via DSL). My practice has been to work in FrontPage when I can, using notepad for additional coding but then test in Netscape. FrontPage will show you how the page/site will be handled in IE (and usually AOL) so testing in Netscape will catch those problems that IE overlooked.” Look for future efund articles in which Rick answers additional questions from the audioconference. January 2004 | |
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