For the most part, the Internet is a very free-thinking and progressive sort of place—store owners can make sales regardless of the time of day, writers can publish whatever they want regardless of their experience, and web surfers can go anywhere and say anything regardless of their age, religion, or haircut. There is something about you, though, that many less refined websites can’t help but notice, and that something is your web browser.

Websites don’t necessarily mean to discriminate against users based on their browser preference—it usually just happens when websites aren’t developed with a wealth of browsers in mind, which results in websites that are more compatible with one browser than another.

If you’ve been using the Internet for more than, say, two weeks, you’ve no doubt experienced some browser compatibility issues—perhaps you’ve visited a site that looked misaligned or noticed elements and/or text that were oddly spaced. Those little quirks probably would have been nonexistent in another browser (the browser the site was designed in, for example) but in your forgotten browser they stick out like a sore, bothersome thumb. So why don’t all websites look the same in all browsers? Well, because…

Browsers are developed by humans. The browser you’re using to view this page is a translation device that has turned lines code into a site that you can read easily. The World Wide Web consortium establishes basic rules for translating HTML documents, but the rules are not hard and fast, which gives browser developers considerable room to interpret and bend them. When the crackerjack engineers at Mozilla developed Firefox, they did so with an interpretation of the rules that differed slightly from that of the wiz kids at Apple. This means that…

Browsers translate code differently. All browsers are here to make web surfing possible for everyone, not just people who are well-versed in HTML. However, each browser has a slightly different way of translating the language of the Web, and these differences manifest themselves in the way a website appears to visitors. It’s sort of like this: while a Brit and an American are visiting Spain, they happen upon a restaurant advertising its “papas fritas,” and they’re suddenly both hungry for fried wedges of potato. The Brit suggests they stop in for “chips,” and the American announces that he’s hungry for “French fries.” You see? Same meaning, different appearance. It’s also worth mentioning in the same breath that…

Browsers do not use dictionaries. If the travelers in the last example made it to France and neither spoke French, they’d pass by a restaurant famous for “pommes frites” without giving fried potatoes a second thought. Browsers do this too—if they don’t recognize code, they ignore it, which can result in major inconsistencies across different browsers. Of course, even browsers of the same origin have compatibility issues because…

The language of the Web is constantly evolving. A cutting edge website might look great in IE8 and wonky in IE6 even if the exact same Microsoft super-humans coded the browsers because IE6 isn’t capable of reading newer Web code. “But IE6 is so 2001,” say you, “Surely no one is using it anymore.” On the contrary: many internet users are happy as can be with the functionality of their older browsers and see no benefit in upgrading.
The good news is that because we know what causes browser compatibility issues, we also know how to fix browser compatibility issues. Namely by:

• Coding things a number of different ways so that all browsers understand
• Not using super-secret, just-released code
• Not using exclusive, browser-specific code

The better news is that even though there are hundreds of free browsers out there just itching to translate Web code, the general public only uses seven of them—IE6, 7, 8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera (eight when IE9 comes out later this year)—which means no one will have to dedicate his or her life to making sure your website is coded for every single browser that’s ever been or ever will be developed. However, code changes often and new versions of browsers regularly become available for download to keep up with the evolving Web, so it’s possible that a site that looks perfect in the Big Seven browsers today may need to be tweaked (or overhauled) tomorrow to accommodate progress.

If you’re a website owner, it’s important that you make sure your site looks clean and professional in all the major browsers (you can get an idea of how your site looks in different browsers at Browsershots.org). It’s also important to keep any eye on changes in browsers and code so that your site can continue to treat all of its visitors equally.