Production-Now.com Media Production Mentoring

Free online film school designed with beginning filmmakers in mind.

5.01.2008

Web Browsers

I write a lot about filmmaking because that is my focus, but Production-Now.com is about media production, so today I'm writing about web development.

It is important whenever you are working on a website to test it on various browsers and on various machines. For instance, the website may look fine in, say, IE, Firefox and Safari on a PC, but not good on Firefox on a Mac, as was the case of a website I was testing today.

(NB: I altered the content of the website in the picture... it's not really Production-Now.com's site)


Firefox on a PC


Firefox on a Mac

It is fairly common for websites to display differently on different web browsers--such as Firefox and Internet Explorer, especially because IE doesn't keep itself compliant with web standards--but to see such a vast difference in the same browser on different platforms was surprising.

I'm pretty sure the web guy over there has fixed the problem, but it was a good reminder to test your site on other machines and browsers.

~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor

2 comments :

Unknown said...

A lot of people use mobile devices to browse the web, these days. A web designer should carefully design a site to degrade gracefully for tiny screens and limited bells/whistles. A List Apart is a great site for information on designing accessible sites.

Luke Holzmann said...

Great point, Jonathan! I remember standing in a Mac store where I pointed an iPhone to Production-Now.com. It was cool to see the site on a small screen.

Thanks for the link.

~Luke