Traditional print design starts with the premise of a static size and shape. The designer then takes into consideration the material printed on and the dynamics of any surrounding or competing visuals. The web however is dramatically different. The size and shape are not guaranteed and there are no competing visuals. Furthermore different browsers display the code that constructs the web page differently.

You might be thinking to yourself, “I thought there were web standards”. You are indeed correct. The web standards are created by a group called W3C (www.w3c.org). However, there isn’t a browser created that is fully compliant with any of the specifications put out by this organization and some interpret the specification differently or ignore it all together! This means that as a web designer you end up coding for multiple browsers. Even if a customer wanted to pay for the time to code a site for all browsers and all their versions, it would be nearly impossible to produce an identical visual result across the board.

Browser Compatibility Bang For The Buck

Internet Explorer: 67.55%
Firefox: 21.53%
Safari: 8.29%
Chrome: 1.12%
Opera: 0.70%
Netscape: 0.57%
Other: 0.22%

Data Provided by Wikipedia

Targeting Firefox and IE7 and Above you end up addressing over 70% of web users. To boost the number over 90% graceful degradation of the code should be considered for IE6. With this practical and economical approach to target browser consideration you can guarantee wide target audience delivery. This does not mean that display will be identical from one browser to another, but the differences should be minimal.