Too much time is spent designing websites to work for various browsers. It’s time for browsers to start working for website design. Or better yet, there should be some sort of coding standard that can take any website – no matter what browser renders it – and transform it to having the same desired look and functionality. It’s quite possible that HTML5 could do this.
Let Website Designers Sleep
Website designers are working day in and day out trying to iron out all the little kinks just so different browsers can display the website in the same way. Sure, it’s a big deal that all the website’s details are close to perfect and the same (why should it look different?) – browser compatibility is the responsibility of the website designer. However, as time moves forward there are more browser versions than ever before and the numbers won’t stop multiplying. Website designers have too many browsers and too many versions to keep track of.
It’s Time for a Change in Website Design Standards
Technology is fully capable of scrapping all the old versions of browsers and using the more advanced, up-to-date browsers. This is not to say to force internet users to upgrade their versions of their browser, or to switch to the same browser. But something should be done to lower the amount of time website designers spend on browser compatibility and more time on designing graphics or doing other useful design tasks.
Having a simplified coding standard could phenomenally drop the price of designing websites. It would also help make web design a less tedious job. Give website designers something more important to do – like moving rocks.
What it Would Take for One Coding Standard to Exist
First of all, everyone would have to be involved in its implementation. Popular browser programmers should create similar rendering styles from now on – this means Microsoft employees who design Internet Explorer, Apple employees who design Safari, Google employees who design Chrome, and Mozilla employees who design Firefox. For the simple things that work and don’t work should apply to all browsers.
It’s OK for browsers to have their perks, be unique and creative, otherwise they couldn’t compete with one another. But if a website designer wants to make a website look a certain way, the browsers shouldn’t get in the way.
Maybe the issue is not with the browsers. Maybe there is a way to apply a specific standard of coding. W3C did a splendid job designing the code specifications for HTML and XHTML. It would be great if they implemented some kind of way to contribute to browser compatibility even more with HTML5.
What ever needs to be done, it needs to be done.