Validation, Compatibility, Javascript and Browsers

I've read another post in this forum put up recently and this is along the same lines and abit different aswell...

I recently put together a website, as an amateur, and tested it in IE, all of which I was quite happy about - it's the bulk of the home user market.

Now I've got the time I'm ready and willing to begin to produce a second version that will work properly in FireFox, Opera etc aswell. The confusion begins...

Here's a few questions revolving around this:

- If my site looks right and works well in Opera does that mean it'll look right and work well in FireFox/IE etc?

- If I code some HTML that is valid and CSS that is valid too will that ensure that it looks the same/similar across the different browsers?

- Is there some CSS that will work in some browsers and not others?

- Given that Javascirpt/JScript has subtle differences across the browsers above is there some validation I can do on that, or is there a list somewhere of all the Javascript/JScript functions that are common to all the browsers?

- Will I be able to get the project working on one browser and finding it does the same in the others? If so which browser is it? (I always figured it was Opera)

(On abit of different note - should I be looking at designing with CSS positioning rather than tables?)

And finally:
- is there any hope?

Many thanks

PS I might add a few more questions to this once I've unravelled my head abit.

No, not necessarily - all browsers have their little differences.


It won't ensure it's the same- no, but
it's the best you can do. You sometimes might need to use the odd hack or two to address browser issues - most of them being IE's.

Yes - lots. Mostly IE. The message here is that IE is basically a bit crap and does things badly or not at all.
A few IE problems :

• It doesn't undestand 'position:fixed'
• or 'min-width'/'min-height'
• It treats 'height' as it should be treating 'min-height'.
• It doesn't recognise the :hover pseudo-class on anything but the 'a' tag.
• It doesn't recognise :target at all.
• It treats floats wrongly.

I'm sure there are many more, but these are a few off the top of my head.


Some people say Opera's the most standards-compliant. Others say it's an IE wannabe. Personally, I develop in Firefox.

Absolutely. Check out the article in my sig. Well, don't just 'check it out' - read it.

There's always hope!

Bonrouge did a good job of answering those questions.

Telling whether Opera or the Mozilla Gecko engine (used in Netscape 6+ and Firefox) is more standards compliant would be difficult, however it seems to me that Firefox 1.0+ is more standards compliant than Opera 7.54.

Thanks guys,

but here are a couple more questions:

Is there a list somewhere, eg a reference manual style thing, of all the css commands that aren't supported by each browser eg. a table would be nice.

And the same question but for Javascript/JScript - I have a basic shopping cart on my website that doesn't let some people add stuff to the cart because it only works with function unique to IE. Is there a list made up somewhere, and if not, then why not damn it!!?

Also, on a lighter note, if you become an expert in the cross-browser compatibilty of CSS and Javascript/JScript is there alot of money it...?

Many thanks...

I don't know about javascript support, but Quirksmode (I don't know the author's name) has a pretty good css reference.

As for the money... I'm sure there's good money in this kind of thing, but I don't see any of it - I'm an English teacher .

I know of two other good lists.
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/
http://www.csscreator.com/attributes/

The key is to test each script and page in several versions of many browsers, because even if you knew exactly what each browser suported, there are still bugs that you can come across.

As for money, you would need to ask someone who is better established that I am.