Browser
The first thing you should know when you start to create or design web pages is that they will most likely look different when viewed using either of the 3 most popular browsers; i.e. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator or Opera.
What I do is is install all 3 on my computer and view the same pages using each and see how certain code are interpreted by each program.
Everything usually works fine when using Microsoft's Internet Explorer but the same cannot be assumed for Netscape and to a lesser extent, Opera.
What I USED to do...
So if I have a problem with a page looking strange in Netscape, I usually open the html document in Netscape's Composer and make the changes so the desired effect is compatible with Netscape. This is not always so simple, though.
Who is winning the browser war?
Up to April 24th 2002, according to the statistic I gather from the hits on my own web pages, only less than 3% of people use Netscape! (± 0.5% for other browsers like Opera etc.). Just one year ago, it was 91% and 9%!
Lately however, I was surprised that it seemed as though Netscape was making a comeback - that is, until I had downloaded Mozilla 1.0 which declares itself as Netscape 6. Mozilla is also fast becoming a webmaster favourite, so check it out!
The winner by a very comfortable margin is still Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
So if you are like me, not having much time to really design 2 separate versions (for MSIE and Netscape) of each page, then just design one that works well with MSIE and a big majority of the people viewing your site will at least view it correctly.
Do I design my web pages for different browsers now? Hell NO...
These days however, I just code my web pages according to the latest web standards in XHTML and I try not to concern myself with designing for a specific browser or browsers - life's simply too short, dude!
