DR. WEBSITE
Some Ways to Test How Sites Will Look in Older Browsers
Dear Dr. Website®: I've gotten used to testing my pages with just the latest versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. How can I make sure that my pages will still look good to users with older versions or other kinds of browsers? Are there user groups that will test for you? There are many online resources that can help you address concerns about how your pages will look when displayed in browsers that don't support the latest proprietary browser extensions.For starters, the Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer aims to help you redesign your pages to ensure cross-browser compatibility. It runs a Perl script to let you see what a page looks like when certain tags aren't supported. After you enter a URL to view, you can select which elements should or shouldn't be permitted. These include image tags, tables, <BLINK>, frames, font changes, background colors, Java applets, and JavaScript commands.
The Digital Forms Testing Home Page is a real-world test suite for trying out how a browser handles forms. You can get immediate results on whether your own browser supports features like Netscape cookies, or if it sends identifying information about the browser type and version. Take a look at the collective results of all visitors who've completed the tests, which are sorted by browser and type of test. Brief descriptions of the tests themselves are given in the test results section.
Several other interactive sites also let users test their browsers. The WWW Test Pattern site lets you test your browser's support of HTML 2.0 tags, HTML 3.0 tags, proprietary Netscape and Microsoft extensions, and Java support. The WWW Viewer Test Page, maintained by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, tests to see that you have installed and configured movie viewers and sound players. There's even a site, lynx-me, that can compel your graphical client software to act like a text-only browser. When you enter a URL--say, for your own Web site --in the single-field form on this page, a CGI script runs to show you how that page would display in the text-only browser Lynx.
To answer your second question, there are several sites devoted to helping Web designers and Webmasters. You can ask participants at sites like the Webtesters' Club if they have any difficulty displaying your site's content under its browsing conditions. Using an HTML validator to ensure that your HTML is technically correct can help you proofread your work, as well as help you serve your site's visitors better.
Highlighting Images
Dear Dr. Website®: Is there a way to use a callout--or what's sometimes called micro-help or "balloon help"--on a graphic? I would like to have users of my Web page see a description appear when they hover their mouse pointer over a graphic, or a portion of a graphic.One way to make descriptions appear next to your buttons or other images when you place the cursor over them is via JavaScript. The JavaScript function, commonly implemented with the onMouseOver command, loads any new images according to the current mouse position. Making the descriptions disappear when you move the cursor away is then usually implemented with the onMouseOut command.
You may have also seen these commands in action if you've ever visited a site where individual images in a navigational bar are highlighted as the user moves the cursor over each one. The JavaScript Tip Repository on Web reference.com contains a step-by-step guide to creating a highlighted image menu. You'll also find many useful code samples of these effects created with JavaScript at the Linkfinder-JavaScript site. These effects can only be seen by visitors with JavaScript-compatible browsers, and it's a good idea to use some form of browser detection to provide alternative content for visitors with non-JavaScript browsers.
Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 3, Issue 5, March 3, 1997 © internet.com Corporation All rights reserved. Keywords: design java Date: 19970303
