To get some understanding of how browsers managed to diversify and standards become ignored, it is necessary to look back to the 90’s and to Netscape and Microsoft’s browser war at the dawn of the web.

Netscape Navigator was once the de-facto browser, used by 80% of all internet users at its peak. Version 3 of the browser was very good and dealt with the homogonous HTML that made up the Internet at that time very well. But things change quickly in technology and for Netscape the danger came from Microsoft who had noticed their dominance in this area and wanted their threat removed. Internet Explorer 3 was released and heavily promoted in 1996. What’s more, Microsoft distributed the browser free with Windows and soon it was taking market share from Navigator at a very fast rate.

In the competition for m,arket share, the two companies released new versions of their browsers at ever decreasing intervals, sacrificing quality for hype and functionality. New HTML and DHTML tags were released with poor documentation such that the tags would be interpreted differently in each browser.

Nestcape blundered with a poor version 4 and when IE4 was released it saw the demise of Navigator. By the time of IE6 Microsoft had 95% of the market. Microsoft’s implementation of HTML had suffered considerably and soon it was commonplace to see the words “optimised for ‘Internet Explorer 6, screensize x by y’ on a splash screen for a website.

As you can see from the graph above, IE wiped the floor with Netscape (and suffered a serious antitrust case in the process) leaving the world with a unique, ubiquitous, insecure, non-standard browser.

Wikipedia refers to the browser as:

…a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.

The one area that should not cause accessibilty problems is the browser. Standards and rules have existed for many years that should have negated browser issues. However, as each browser is owned and developed by a different company, each competing for your custom, they have been developed without unification and standardization in mind. This is gradually improving but we still encounter problems moving from on browser to another.

The graph below shows the distribution of browsers visiting the w3c site over the last 2 years. This graph is biased towards ‘alternative’ (to Internet Explorer) browsers because of the content of the site but it does provide a good insight in the future of browser usage.

The graph shows how IE6 is being replaced by IE7 and also that Firefox usage is growing. I will talk about each of the browsers in more depth in a later article.

The point to be taken here is not which browser is better - that is pretty much agreed - it is that that the users accessing your site will be using a number of different browsers and you must do all you can to accomodate each of them or else risk losing part of your audience.

One of the most important issues in accessibility is that of the users screen resolution. Users are now using a broader range of resolutions than ever before, from the old 800 x 600 pixels to the latest widescreen offerings of 1920 x 1080 and above.

The most cited procedure for overcoming this diversity is in using a fluid-based format that adjusts itself to fit the screen but this means that one has to relinquish a great deal of the control of the design of the site. The other option is to use a fixed width approach based on the lowest resolution screensize (generally 800 x 600) which leads to lots of whitespace appearing on larger resolution monitors. Take a look here for a list of all of the different screensizes that may be encountered.

The graph below shows how the market has progressed over the last few years. It can be seen that there seems to be a move from to greater than 1024 x 768 resolutions from the older 800 x 600 (now down to about 14% of users). However, 14% is a large number of users and an accessible website will have to take this into account.

The truth of the situation is that there is no single solution to this problem. The solution is very much application-specific: some sites will suit different solutions. The only thing that is not optional is that all resolutions must be able to view the content.

JavaScript has always been the predominant client-side scripting language of the Internet. However, content should never be restricted by JavaScript as many users will be accessing your content via browsers without JavaScript (whether the JavaScript is disabled or not available). The graph below shows the percentage of users accessing the Internet without JavaScript over the last five years.

While it is now becoming commonplace to see extensive client-side programming users without JavaScript should not be overlooked. The W3C WAI Guidelines states:

“Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.
If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.”

Personally, I am not in favour of ever creating two versions of the same page as keeping the two in sync often becomes a task in itself, and a rather unnecessary one at that. What I believe the W3C to be advocating is that the page content be delivered such a way that it can be viewed with or without JavaScript, i.e. delivered in non-JavaScript friendly format which is then acted upon by client-side JavaScript. If this approach is used both camps will be kept happy and the website will be accessible by all.

The following video is from the BBC’s Click programme and it goes a long way in pointing out the need for accessibility.