Formatting for Netscape

Before I start, I would like to state that I almost exclusively use IBM's WebExplorer, as I firmly believe it to be the best browser on the market. It does have some small shortcomings in that it does not support frames or Java, but I consider both these superfluous to information exchange, transmission speed, and readability. Basically, it comes down to reading a comic book versus a classic novel, One comes with frames and nice graphics, and the other has the stuff you want to read.

I was recently perusing OS/2 e-Zine!, and I read an article on WWW design (August, 1997), and a survey on browser use (November, 1997):

Do you want Communicator for OS/2?

Category				Count	Percentage
[...]
No, I use a non-Netscape browser	16	0.8%

Although the question does not explicitly include those who use both browsers, it does suggest that my previous idea that Web Explorer was more widely used was erroneous. And this is just with OS/2 users. So, I decided that I will now make my WWW pages more Netscape compatible, as they were not always so in the past, as Netscape has some bad formatting, for example the H5 heading tag was unsatisfactory, so I changed all those to H4:

H1 heading

H2 heading

H3 heading

H4 heading

H5 heading

H6 heading

And this is how it looks on the individual browsers:

WebExplorer	Netscape

As you can see from above, the <H5> and <H6> Netscape tags are way more diminutive than the normal text.

Another problem is that Netscape does not appear to support TextArea boxes. I believe even the lowly M$ Explorer does this.
This is a TextArea Box, Type in here

name:

password:

card number:

expires: /

telephone:

name:
password:
card number:
expires:	/
telephone:

And this is how the above TextArea boxes look on the individual browsers:

WebExplorer Netscape
WebExplorer Netscape

Also, the alignment tags for in-line images do not portray correctly in Netscape. Anyway, from now on, I will make an attempt to ensure that my site satisfactorily displays in the Netscape browser.

If you want, I have a whole html worksheet to check out browser support.

[to page top]