Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser Design

• An AOL Guide For Webmasters
  Official information from AOL about designing websites that will work and look fine (or at least decent!) for AOL members.
  
  
• AnyBrowser.com
  Great resource for checking your website against a variety of browsers and versions and for browser information -- the place to find out how to make your web site viewable, usable and informative for the majority of your visitors.
  
  
• Bobby
  Check your website here for accessibility for as many as possible, including disabled viewers and others. Created by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), now at Watchfire.com.
  
  
• Browser Archive
  Evolt.org's incredibly thorough archive with over 100 browsers with links to their sites. As you'll see, there are so many browsers besides Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera and iCab!
  
  
• Browser Chart
  From Webmonkey. Thorough, well organized chart to quickly see what is supported by a variety of browsers, versions, and operating systems. Includes old browsers through the latest. Very helpful.
  
  
• Browser Compatibility
  Annotated links to resources from About.com. Good source.
  
  
• Browsers
  Peter-Paul Koch's thorough evaluations and testings results for JavaScript, some CSS, DHTML for Netscape 2 thru 6, Internet Explorer 3 thru 5, Opera 3 thru 5, iCab, Konqueror, and noscript browsers. Links, resources, and overall great Web site of info. His site also has many tips and tutorials on all the above, too.
  
  
• Check in Different Browsers: Reaching the Widest Possible Audience
  Resource of links from Alan November, Educational Renaissance Planners.
  
  
• Cross-browser Events for Dynamic HTML
  by Rob Falla. Webreview's first in a series of articles, with quite a few examples of cross-browser compatible code and what to watch out for, too. Good info.
  10/22/99, by Rob Falla, WebReview.com
  
  
• Designing for Different Resolutions
  by Michael Kay, Webmonkey. Many interesting tidbits, facts and figures, including not only PCs and MACs but also WebTV, resources to check browser views, more. The author also covers designing for the fold (or not), dealing with frames, fixed or percentage table widths, page widths for printing. Helpful, informative article.
  
  
• Designing For Television
  From WebTV. How to make your website look good on a television set.
  
  
• Figuring Out Browser Compatibility, If Only I Had Known
  Webreview's excellent, thorough article, and includes great browser compatibility charts.
  
  
• Getting A Perfect Fit
  by Lisa Rowe of WebVoodoo's WebDesign Clinic^TM - The Ezine. Good article and overview about considerations for website design and screen resolutions, including resources for further info.
  
  
• Improving Appearance of Arial Font on the Macintosh (Solutions for both Mac Users and Web Developers)
  by Bob Baumel. Excellent, informative article. A must read article.
  
  
• Is Your Site Ready for Netscape 6?
  by Michael Kay, Webmonkey. Good discussion about the new features, and the good, the bad with making your sites work, especially if you've been using version 4 proprietary tags (Guess what?! They won't work with NS6!).
  
  
• LIFT Online
  An online service by Usability.net to help recognize and solve HTML code for usability and accessibility, and includes a 508 Accessibility test.
  
  
• The Myth of 800x600
  by James Kalbach, WebReview.com. Discusses various resolutions and statistics but also stresses the importance of the viewable browser area typically used that needs to be stressed more than the resolution. Good reading. Article date: March 16, 2001.
  
  
• Real-World Browser Size Stats, Part II
  by Adrian Roselli for Evolt.org. Discusses not only screen resolution but also viewable browser area stats and the importance of considering the viewing area that the user is actually using and not just the screen resolution. Author also offers means of checking those on your own sites in Part I of this article.
  
  
• Use of ALT texts in IMGs
  Fabulous information by A.J.Flavell about the importance of using helpful information the ALT tag for images. Examples are cited, ideas for what to use for horizontal rules, bullets, and more.
  
  
• Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer
  Tool to check a webpage for backwards compatibility (older browsers, a variety of browsers and operating systems).
  
  
• Web Page Compatibility Testing
  from About.com. Information and links to further resources. Good source of information.
  
  
• Web Page Compatibility Viewer
  See how your webpage measures up with this helpful online tool from Delorie Software. Other helpful tools at this site, too, such as the Lynx Viewer.
  
  
• WebTV Viewer Tool
  Simulate WebTV on your own computer to check how your website is viewed with WebTV with WebTV's free WebTV Viewer Tool. Especially helpful for website developers (and quite an eye-opener!).
  
  
• Why Does it Hurt When I <P>? A Call for Web Standards
  by Jeffrey Zeldman for High Five. Now in their archives. An excellent article about some of the problems we face designing, building Web sites and why we need standards.
  
  
• Why Don't You Code For Netscape?
  by Jeffrey Zeldman for A List Apart, December 7. 2001. Consider forward compatibility design that's far more accessible, follows W3C recommendations, is standards compliant, and works in any browser. Zeldman discusses the issues and why.
  
  

Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform Font Issues

See also the HTML and CSS sections for more excellent resources.

• A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which is Best and When?
  By Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills, Michelle Peterson, & Kelsey Storrer for Usability News, Summer 2001. Excellent study and findings about font faces and sizes used on the Web.
  [Summer 2001, by Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills, Michelle Peterson, for Usability News]
  
  
• Absolute Font Sizes: A Clarification
  by Eric Meyer (originally for WebReview December 1999). Excellent article about the bugs with CSS and font sizing.
  [12/1999 by Eric Meyer, originally for WebReference.com]
  
  
• Achieving A Consistent and Readable Type Across Platforms
  by Wes Reimer, WebReference.com. [Note: This article's info is outdated. See also Zeldman's Dec. 25, 2000 Daily Report about this. I also suggest reading Zeldman's Fear of Style Sheets IV.] Article with screenshots showing the differences between Macs and PCs. Provides (outdated) solutions and alternatives to dealing with such widely varying font size issues (what may look fine on one platform may not be readable on the other).
  [12/14/2000 by Wes Reimer for WebReference.com]
  
  
• Assigning browser-specific styles
  by Peter-Paul Koch. Good trick for customizing style sheets easily for browsers using @import, such as font sizes for Internet Explorer vs. Netscape 4. CSS code. Sample code and instructions.
  [08/08/2001 by Peter-Paul Koch, evolt.org.]
  
  
• Browser Safe Fonts
  Jason Cranford Teague's article on using more than the typical 2 major fonts (Helvetica, Times) for websites. Lists main fonts shipped with Macs and PCs, offers options to consider beyond what's so typically seen.
  
  
• Building Characters: A Brief History of the Web War
  by Geoff Duncan, Tidbits.com. Interesting history and technical reasons behind the type size on Macs especially that can be too small to read. This is a sequel to update the previous history written at Tidbits.com. Links to resources. Interesting, helpful info.
  [03/20/2000 by Geoff Duncan, Tidbits.com]
  
  
• How should text be presented within a website?
  by Michael L. Bernard for SURL (Software Usability Research Laboratory), part of the series Criteria for optimal web design (designing for usability). Fantastic article based on solid research that explains the results of studies for a variety of fonts, font sizes, discusses serif vs. sans serif, line lengths, background colors and texture, contrast, more. The article discusses a variety of age groups, too. Very insightful, helpful article. A must read article.
  [by Michael L. Bernard for SURL]
  
  
• Cross-Browser Compatible Style Sheets
  by Ian Graham. Excerpt from The XHTML 1.0 Web Application Sourcebook. Lots of good tips, workarounds, what to avoid for the major browsers, versions and platforms. Links to further resources, too.
  [by Ian Graham]
  
  
• A Dao of Web Design
  by John Allsopp for A List Apart. Excellent article about the font sizing problems across platforms and browsers. Also discusses other accessibility, compatibility areas, with emphasis on adaptability and accessibility and ways to achieve that.
  
  
• David Baron's CSS Playground
  Great information on cross-platform, cross-browser font size problems, browser inconsistencies and workarounds, lots of tests with screenshots, lists of bugs, much more on CSS.
  [by David Baron]
  
  
• Default Fonts - Windows 95 & Macintosh
  Graphic display of default fonts for Windows95 and Mac OS. (Shows fonts at 12 pt. Amazing differences in sizes!) Also links to fonts supplied with MSOffice, MSPlus! and Core Web fonts.
  
  
• Fear of Style Sheets, IV: Give Me Pixels or Give Me Death
  by Jeffrey Zeldman for A List Apart. Terrific article about dealing with font sizing for CSS with the current cross-browser, cross-platform issues. A must read article.
  [by Jeffrey Zeldman for alistapart.com]
  
  
• The Font of Foulness, Part I: Size Matters
  WebReference tutorial, by Stephanos Piperoglou, on CSS and HTML font sizing issues.
  [06/15/2000 by Stephanos Piperoglou, for WebReference.com]
  
  
• Fonts and Products: Fonts supplied with some Microsoft products
  Microsoft's listing of default fonts included for a variety of their programs, including several Windows versions, Office products (Access, Excel, Word, more), several Internet Explorer versions, core web fonts. Also lists individual fonts with information on which programs they're included in and the font creators.
  [microsoft.com]
  
  
• Fonts Included in Various Microsoft Products
  Well done information here, easy to access. Included: Internet Explorer 4, 5, FrontPage 98, 2000, Office Office 97 SR1a, 2000, Windows 95, 98, ,98se, NT Workstation 4.0, NT Workstation 4.0 SP5, Word 2000.
  [by Brett Merkey]
  
  
• Improving Appearance of Arial Font on the Macintosh (Solutions for both Mac Users and Web Developers)
  by Bob Baumel. Excellent, informative article. A must read article.
  [by Bob Baumel]
  
  
• Macintosh Basic System Fonts, Plus
  by Marlene Bruce. Screen shots of numerous basic Mac fonts at 10 pt., 12 pt., 14 pt., and more. Wow. What a great resource and helpful insight to see all these screenshots.
  [by Marlene Bruce]
  
  
• So, What Size and Type of Font Should I Use on My Website?
  by M. Bernard and M. Mills, Usability News, Summer 2000. Study done with IBM compatible computers comparing readability of various fonts and sizes. Interesting, helpful info.
  [Summer 2000, by Bernard and M. Mills, Usability News]
  
  
• Size Matters
  by Todd Fahrner, A List Apart. Excellent tutorial that explains cross-browser font sizing problems for xx-small through xx-large keywords in CSS 1. Workarounds and alternative solutions are also explained and provided for Netscape 4 through the newer versions 5 and 6.
  
  
• Standard Fonts on Windows and Mac Computers
  by Peter Perchansky, DynamicNet. Lists basic fonts with Windows 95, Mac standard fonts, Microsoft Web Fonts (for Mac, Win3.x/95/NT), and resources. Good info.
  
  
• Text Size Control with CSS
  by Steve Mulder, Webmonkey. Shows screenshot examples of cross-browser, cross-platform differences, using pixels, ems, percentages and what to watch out for. Includes JavaScript sniffer to direct to separate style sheets for macs or PCs.
  [09-02/98, Steve Mulder, Webmonkey.]
  
  
• Text Sizing: The Ground Will Not Be Friends With You
  Owen Briggs has provided 264 screenshots rendering fonts in the most popular browsers. Owen's screenshots can help provide amazing insight about what all the browsers do (or don't do) to fonts. Absolutely incredible resource.
  [06-06/2002, Owen Briggs, The Noodle Incident.]
  
  
• Toward a standard font size interval system
  by Todd Fahrner, Metrius (previously Verso). "Discusses how the 7 HTML font sizes should (and don't) relate to the 7 CSS font size keywords." Excellent article that explains CSS font sizing problems, including graphics that show the comparisons of font sizes in various platforms, browsers. Article includes references, links to W3C recommendations, possible workarounds, and much more. Definitely a must read as part of exploring the CSS font sizing issues.
  [by Todd Fahrner]
  
  
• Understanding Cross-Platform Text Size Differences
  Informative, helpful article by Bob Baumel. Explains and shows cross-platform font issues, sizing variations and what to keep in mind for your Web site designs.
  [by Bob Baumel]
  
  
• Using Special Characters on Web Pages: Cross-Platform Considerations
  by Bob Baumel. Advice on special characters that work cross-platform for PC, Mac, and Unix, concentrating on ISO 8859-1 character set, also known as ISO Latin-1, and also some on Unicode.
  [by Bob Baumel]
  
  
• Web Pages aren't Printed on Paper
  Or how I gave up trying to "control" web pages and discovered adaptability
  by John Allsopp, WestCiv website.
  Important reasons why relative sizing and percentages for fonts need to be used for adaptability.
  [by John Allsopp, WestCiv]
  
  
• Why Windows Web Pages Have Tiny Text
  by Geoff Duncan, Tidbits.com. Great article about what's going on with Windows font sizing vs. Mac font sizing.
  [02/15/1999 by Geoff Duncan, Tidbits.com]
  
  
• Windows default fonts
  by Jukka Korpela. Compiled table chart with samples from Windows 3.x, 95, 98, NT4.
  [by Jukka Korpela]