Do You Care For Browser Compatibility?
Posted in Optimize And Monetize, Web Master by DB
Ensuring browser compatibility is something most of us strive to achieve. Yes, newbie designers often disregard the need for cross browser compatibility but this is getting to be lesser as more and more people start adopting alternate browsers such as firefox, opera and safari to name a few. A relatively new browser such as Flock has had more than 4 million downloads since launch tells you that people are more open to experiment with various options available to them.
That said, it came as a real surprise to me when I recently found that sify.com (a hugely popular portal in India and a listed company on Nasdaq) does not follow even the basic principle of cross browser compatibility when designing their website. A site that is ranked 449 by Alexa simply falls over when you try and access it using Safari.
Here are some screenshots of sify.com when viewed using Safari
Sify.com on Safari Browser Image 1
Sify.com on Safari Browser Image 2
Sify.com on Safari Browser Image 3
Now for some screenshots of how the designer originally meant for the website to look. A far cry from the above pics.
Sify.com on I.E Browser
Sify.com on Firefox browser
Again folks, a listed company on Nasdaq, that earns all its revenue from advertising and other internet related monetization should be looking to maximizing its revenue by increasing its traffic and increasing its revenue from that traffic. Sadly it seems that the Safari browser is taboo or maybe sify.com has simply decided to ignore Apple and its increasingly popular browser. Small wonder then that the stock price is $5.2, a far cry from the glory days of $380.00
This article is written by the author of the popular fan blog of the up and coming singer Asia’h Epperson
One Response
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December 28th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Well I run a small portal site - and recently did a redesign, and I made sure it was compatible with IE, Mozilla and Opera.
Safari and Chrome unfortunately did not make the cut because I found the engine that powers them both to be very buggy in rendering and in the end too much effort and cost for any return on investment, at least for now.
Not only is the safari engine really bad in rendering sites normally, but Apple should have supported Firefox. The world doesn’t need another browser, it needs a solid alternative like Firefox which already has the momentum. Safari has something like 8% market share, which it will probably never cap - but had they supported firefox instead officially, as well as Google, it would be well near the 50% mark.