Old web browsers can make certain dating sites look broken. If you maintain the front end of a dating site you might want to look into XBDiff, a service for checking how web pages look in multiple browsers.
XBDiff is an automated solution to your cross browser layout problems. Just point it at your site, and let it find the bugs. XBDiff is like the virtual tester you always wish you had. See what we do and learn how it works.
Cross browser layout problems damage your brand, interrupt your design, and detract from your user experience.
I used to use Browsershots, which supports many more browser types, but newcomer XBDiff feels easier to use and cheaper too. Probably a good idea to test against both services next time you update your site.
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Thanks for the tip, this is definitely a good one.
There’s a very strong push within the web development community to begin nudging older browser users towards up-to-date and more powerful alternatives such as Firefox 3.x, Safari 3.x & IE 7+. You can expect to see many sites doing this more often especially since Facebook recently took steps to advise IE6 users that they would have a less palatable experience by using a dated browser.
Sites like http://www.bringdownie6.com/ & http://www.stopie6.com/ even provide ideas on how to motivate users to upgrade.
Browsers such as IE6 are truly stifling web innovation & it’s good to see some sites taking the initiative to finally help “end-of-life” it.
Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, the makers of Firefox.
Rey, thanks for the info and keep up the great work with Mozilla. About 10% of visitors here are using IE6. I’ve been testing some of the “Update IE6″ scripts on another blog. There are several ways to identify and alert people they are using a stale browser, not sure which once is best though. I like the looks of Bring Down IE6 but it’s only a logo. I want to full conditional code. In fact, it should be a Wordpress plugin, that would be great.
Hey David, Thanks for the mention! We agree with Rey and everyone else that non-compliant browsers such as IE6 should be retired as quickly as possible. We also believe that the browser market will further fragment in the future, which means there will always be a need for cross-browser compatibility testing due to bugs in the implementations and vagaries in the specifications.
@David: Options exist such as http://ie6update.com/ which displays a mini-bar notification at the top of the browser advising users of “missing IE updates” & when clicked redirects the user to the MS IE8 download page.
You could also try sniffing for the user agent in WordPress using code similar to this:http://twodayslate.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/blockredirect-ie6-users/
I think whichever choice you make, being transparent to your users & explaining what you’re doing is critical. The user experience of your site should always come first and as long as you’re open about your intentions, in this case nudging them to upgrade to a better browser, I think your readers will be fine.
@Jeff: No doubt. The various rendering engine teams will try to follow standards (we hope) but invariably there will be quirks in implementations.
I like that one Rey, not too intrusive. I was going to implement a similar feature in the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin, this is much easier. If at all possible, browsers should not be released until it passes the Acid 3 test, although even my copy of Firefox only gets 71/100. New beta of Safari 4 gets 100/100 which is super.