You may be aware that in March, Microsoft launched the latest version of Internet Explorer:  IE9.  Whilst for most people that will not mean a great deal, it might be of interest to you if you have a website.

These days, it certainly can’t be assumed that your website will ‘just work as it should’ in any browser that a person views it in.  In fact, browser compatibility is becoming a bit of a minefield. In addition to Internet Explorer, other browsers include Firefox, Chrome, Opera and the mobile versions of each.  All these browsers have the potential to affect the way your website is presented. Add to this the fact that there are multiple versions of each of those browsers and you have a recipe for some unusual quirks and discrepancies when viewing your website from one browser version to another.

And IE9 is carrying on the trend of testing our websites to the limit.  In many respects IE9 is large leap away from version 8 so this only adds to the potential for your site to display certain quirks.

What quirks should I be looking for?

Unfortunately there isn’t a defined list of what to look out for.  The best test is to view and use your site’s pages as your visitors would.  But as a guide, here are some obvious things to check:

• Fonts: for the most part, any standard web font (e.g. Ariel or Verdana etc) will be fine in any browser. But if your site uses non standard or stylised fonts (especially if your site uses Cufon font replacement) your fancy fonts might actually be appearing in Verdana (or similar). There is a fix for this and your web developer should be able to make the amendments.
• Alignment: do all your images, or form fields or icons etc align as they should?  You might find some elements slightly out of alignment, and again can be fixed with some tweaking.
• Functionality: does everything on your site still work as it should?  Do the forms still work, do your product images appear correctly, does your search function still work as it should?  Check all functional aspects of your site.
• Add-ons: It might be that your site uses third party code to present some aspects of its content (whether you know it or not).  Perhaps if your site has video or a product viewer, again it’s worth checking everything works as it should.

Ironically, it is more likely to be newer websites that might have some issues with this new version on Internet Explorer.  Older websites written in simple HTML are less likely to have compatibility issues, but however old your site is, it’s worth being sure.

And though it almost goes without saying, we’re compelled to in fact say that all websites produced by Execute Marketing are tested against all browsers and browser versions .