At Design Principles, our crew is young, smart and funny, and it leads to some priceless “overheards” during the day. As this is a family-friendly blog, some of them aren’t suitable for sharing, but one that struck me yesterday merits talking about — it’s the high price of poor design. (more…)
Recently a client asked us what we do to test our websites. He had heard from a friend or family member that website testing was important, but didn’t realize that such a thing even existed. What does it entail? How important is it? Do we even DO it?
This is a fair question. In fact, it’s a great question, as it creates an opening for me to talk about something that most people (frankly) wouldn’t be terribly interested in hearing about.
Browser testing a website refers to the process of ensuring that a website’s display and functionality remains intact no matter which web browser or platform (computer “brand”) a visitor is using.
Thanks to some clever television commercials, most folks are aware that there are two major “brands” of computer: those that run Windows and those that run Mac OS X (apologies to Linux fans out there). Fewer people realize that you’re able to choose which web browser you’d prefer to “consume” the Internet with — that you’re not limited only to Internet Explorer on Windows (the blue “e”) or to Safari on the Mac. In fact, according to Wikipedia, there are 25 different browsers available for Internet users to choose from. Twenty-six if you count Internet Explorer 6 as a browser.
