Appendix C: Browser Compatibility index | previous | next

Browser Equivalents

AOL 1.0 and Mosaic 1.0 are similar to MSIE 2.0, except that they don't support any table or form features.

AOL 3.0, Mosaic 3.0, and Opera 3.0 are similar to Navigator 2.0, although Opera is the only one of the three that supports JavaScript, frames, and plug-ins.

Lynx does not display images, plug-ins, style sheets, or layers, because it's text-only. The latest versions can handle both tables and frames, while older versions will chew up tables. All versions can read the contents of <noframes> tags.

Creating a New Browser Profile

If you want to check your pages for compatibility with a specific browser, you can create a new browser profile. A browser profile is a text file. Dreamweaver 4 can create and save plain text files; but be sure to delete any HTML tags from the file. Or, you can use a text editor such as Notepad or Simple Text; or use a word processor and save the file as text.

To create a new browser profile:

1. Open your favorite text editor.

2. Use the text editor to open a browser profile that's similar to the profile you want to create. (This saves you from having to create the whole thing from scratch.)

   The browser profile files are stored in the Dreamweaver/Configuration/BrowserProfiles folder.
   
   

3. Save the new file as a different filename, but in the same folder.

4. The first two lines of the profile should be as follows:

   Name of Profile [return]
   PROFILE_TYPE=BROWSER_PROFILE

   See the next section, Browser Profile Syntax, for information about adding items to the list of attributes.
   
   

5. Save the changes to the new file. You don't need to quit and restart Dreamweaver for it to access the new profile.