Webmasters and Firefox

This is part of Firefox Soapbox. Unfortunately, I have been very busy and did not have time to put as much into this particular article as I had hoped. It should still be useful to any webmaster or web developer!

Check Your Pages

With Firefox’s growing popularity (and its use of W3C-recommended standards), any webmaster should at the minimum make sure his or her websites work with Firefox, and should validate his or her pages using the W3C CSS and (X)HTML validators.

Learn the Issues

Firefox has fantastic PNG and CSS support compared to IE. For more information on PNG support and workarounds (or hacks, as we call them!) check out PNG Transparency in Internet Explorer from PC Magazine. For just a taste of what is possible with CSS that Microsoft Internet Explorer goofs up, check out Eric Meyer’s css/edge collection, a must for any webmaster. (Use Firefox/Opera/etc. but have IE handy to compare...) And remember, this is just the beginning – for example, you will want to check out some CSS hacks. For browser compliance lists, Centricle has you covered!

“Code for Firefox, Hack for IE”

In this article, Chris Burgess discusses why the saying “Code for Firefox, hack for IE” is so popular, and reasons why following suit may ease your work as a web designer.

Spread the Fire

Since Firefox is more of a webmaster’s friend than is IE, you probably want to encourage your users to download Firefox. How? Use buttons and links to promote it. Read SpreadFirefox.com. Link to the Firefox Soapbox series of articles.

Encourage Other Webmasters

Gently remind other webmasters & web developers to use (W3C) standards to allow Firefox and other browsers to work with their sites. On my biggest-loser list of those who do not allow such interoperability are ICQ (Universe), Thompson Education Direct’s SAM & TOM training software, and Yahoo! LAUNCHcast. I have contacted all three and urged them to do the right thing. (But do not let that stop you from doing the same!) (Furthermore, I created a petition to Yahoo! to increase browser compatibility beyond IE. Feel free to sign.)

Return / Contact

Return to Firefox Soapbox home. Send me a comment or suggestion on this page or the series.