Macs, platforms and more
I mentioned before the need to consider other browsers when developing a website – people still use Opera, IE, and Konqueror besides Firefox. The other consideration is that people use other systems to the one being developed on. This goes for Windows and Mac machines.
Someone commented once about how the navigation on their site didn’t work very well on a Mac because the big blue box appeared over it. On looking, where the nice clean navigation should have been, there was an image that had slipped down the screen. Simple enough to fix, but embarrassing to anyone who hadn’t checked a site on their own machine and on only the most popular web browser.
So to ensure all round usability I’ve ordered a Mac G4 iBook and besides which, a book on how to use it. An example of RTFM certainly but also a means to saving many frustrated hours trying to figure out how to use it.
The image at the top of this section relates to the inside cover of the book on Mac OS X Panther I bought by Andy Ihnatko. I’ve read a few chapters already and it’s going to give me a good headstart, I think. Apparently he also likes to write messages in his books so it may be worth looking at least to see if there’s a message. It would be unfair to say what else the message said but it has provided some correspondence by email already.
Back to the point. View the site with a number of audiences in mind and you’ll keep many more people happy, and even more than that, you will prevent the inevitable egg on face. (There’s no definition for this at Urban Dictionary – yet).
