Appendix C: Browser Compatibility

When Do I Need to Make Another Version?

Some 4.0 and later HTML features, such as style sheets, may or may not seriously affect the look of your page from browser to browser. For instance, if you use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to format text, users of older browsers won't see your neat typographical effects, but they won't miss out on any information, either. Layers, on the other hand, will display the contents of the layer without the CSS effects, but the resulting layout maybe so weird that people can't really read the page. (That's why I advocate keeping an old browser around to look at the page.)

Alternate Sites

So now that you know how to find out which tags are supported by which browsers, what do you do about it? You could:

• Keep your sites very lowest-common-denominator, and eschew all the newest bells and whistles, like JavaScript, CSS, DHTML, and other "fancy stuff." But I bet that's not why you bought Dreamweaver.

or

• Create a high-end site that uses up-to-the-minute features and stick one of those annoying "You need Browser X to properly view my page, nyaah!" buttons on your page. But you may lose some of your audience that way, or at least try its patience.