A rookie error of web design and development is creating a website with only one type of user in mind. If you’re familiar with, and regularly use, Mozilla Firefox on a 1280 x 768 screen then it is easy to lose track of the fact that not everybody else will be! Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all websites, gone are the days of the majority of users using Internet Explorer – what works on one browser may not on another and what looks good on one users screen resolution almost certainly won’t on someone else’s.
Designers are required to be much more flexible on the front-end development to allow the back-end engineers to create a multi functional website. When starting out with a design concept, consider having the main focus of the website viewable in all (or at least the majority of) screen sizes. If this means resizing a logo or restructuring the navigation bar so that it will fit on the page in its entirety for all users then this is what you will have to do. It may seem to sacrifice the overall impact of the website on your screen but for others it will mean elements do not drop out of page view. Having fixed headers (and potentially fixed footers) enables you to skip the potential issues of vital content and navigation being missed by users with smaller resolution screens.
The back-end devs need to then consider a thorough Quality Assurance before putting a site live. Test the site on everything from IE7 upwards, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. You never know what browser your next multi-thousand pound client may enter your site on so you need to make sure you have all bases covered.
