Why is the coding for web design so technical when it comes to different browser types?

Question

im coding a website, and i can never seem to get it right for all the browswers (internet explorer 6, internet explorer 7, mozilla firefox etc). i code it and it looks great in ie6, but then i go to ie7 and it looks like c**p. or something cool works in mozilla but then doesnt work in ie6 or 7. can someone please help me out?

Answer 1

Its not really.Nowadays they are trying to focus more on features and IE is actually getting better because they should have never competed on how it renders a site but on how it can help its users.

If you are a great web designer you know what code will work or not. Its not that hard.

Answer 2

let me just say, i feel your pain, as do millions of other people out there...

coding a site that will look good on all the different browsers is tricky business. as you mentioned, different versions of IE will display things differently from each other, and differently than FF. it really depends on what you're trying to put on the site. IE and FF render styles from CSS differently, unfortunately. however, you can do conditional styles...which ease your pain a little bit.

if you make a style sheet for each browser, one for IE, one for FF, you can by default load the stylesheet that works well with FF, but you can override it with something like this:

<!--[if IE]>

load your style sheet

<![endif]-->

can you post anything specific you're trying to put on the site?

Answer 3

Are you validating your HTML?

http://validator.w3.org/

After the HTML validates, then you need to validate the CSS:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

I believe that we should create web pages that are supported by the w3.org standards recommendations organization and not allow one developer or another to have us use their special features that only work on their web-browser.

HTML Standards: http://www.w3.org/html/

CSS Standards: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

Can you use XHTML instead of the older HTML?

Microsoft has such a huge market share for operating systems (OS), that they ignore the standards an do whatever they want to.  I wouldn't start with Windows running IE since you are going to be writing something that doesn't follow standards.

I would start with FireFox, and then get IE to work.