Selecting Which Browsers to Check Against

The first step in checking your page for errors is to specify the minimum browser version you want to check your code against.

Wherever possible, you should start by checking your page(s) in the most recent version of a standards-compliant browser such as Mozilla or Opera. You should also check your pages on Macintosh using a browser such as Safari. As for Internet Explorer, it is advisable to start with Internet Explorer 6 (Windows). Once you know that there are no issues with the latest version of Internet Explorer, you can start working your way down through the earlier browser versions you need to support.

Mac OS Users

On the Mac OS platform, Safari 1.2 has excellent support for web standards. As for Internet Explorer 5.2 (Macintosh), well, IE 5+ was the first standards-compliant browser to be released and has very good support for CSS1 and fairly good partial support of CSS2.

Netscape 4

Although Netscape 4 has been superseded, there are still some users (such as government organizations) that use this antiquated browser version. If you do need to support Netscape 4.x, bear in mind that CSS support is extremely weak. Below are some of the ways that you can cater to Netscape 4.x users.

1. Only feed Netscape 4.x the CSS code it does support. You can accomplish this by hiding unsupported CSS code using the Caio Hack, discovered by Caio Chassot. Here is an example of the Caio Hack.

   .myclass  {  /*/*/ margin-bottom: 2em; /* */ }  

2. Hide all unsupported CSS from Netscape 4.x using the @import directive. Netscape 4.x does not understand the @import method of attaching styles to your web page(s); therefore, you can use this technique to hide all unsupported CSS code from this troublesome browser. In turn, this gives you the flexibility of either:

   
1. Feeding Netscape 4.x the CSS style it supports using the link element as shown in Figure 1.

2. Providing Netscape 4.x users the content without any CSS styles.



Figure 1. Feeding Netscape 4.x the CSS style it supports using the link element

Loading CSS Styles Using the @import Directive

Use the following steps to attach external files using the @import directive.

1. Show the CSS Styles panel (Select Window > CSS Styles).
2. Click the New Style button.
3. Browse to the CSS file you wish to attach.

4. Select the Import radio button as shown in Figure 2.

   

   Figure 2. Loading CSS Styles Using the @import Directive

Use the following steps to attach an external CSS file using the Link method

1. Show the CSS Styles panel.
2. Click New Style the button.
3. Browse to the CSS file you wish to attach.
4. Select the link radio button

Specifying Minimum Browser Versions for Dreamweaver to Check Against

Now that you’re aware of some considerations when choosing minimum browsers your site should work with, I’ll show you how to specify the minimum requirements in Dreamweaver.

Click the following link to view a Macromedia RoboDemo demonstration on how to specify the minimum browser version to check your document(s) for errors.

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Here are the steps from the previous RoboDemo movie to specify the minimum browser version to check your document(s) for errors.

1. Click the Browser Target Check menu in the Document toolbar.

   

2. Select Settings.
3. Specify the minimum browser version you wish to check your pages against.