Site Testing and Browser Support
The pages you see here are being developed in my home and are tested on machines that my family owns. That means I don't have access to a lot of machine and browser combinations for testing. We have tested as follows:
On Windows XP Pro:
Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9 all claim compliance with the relevant standards for the XHTML and CSS used in these pages: XHTML1.1 (Transitional) and CSS 2.1. That being said, there are things that manage to render well in Firefox and Opera that end up a mess in Safari and vice versa. There are subtle differences in the way the specs were implemented, and these browsers have their quirks.
Internet Explorer 7.0 also manages to render these pages without a lot of tweaking. There are hacks in the code that are supposed to deal with the yawning chasm between Internet Explorer 6's version of HTML and CSS and what a modern, compliant browser implements. The problem I've got is that I cannot test the IE6 patches on any machine I've got. It is very, very difficult to run two versions of the IE browser on one PC. If you are using IE6 and run into problems, let me know... but it is probably time to download IE7. That has been the current version since Oct. 2006.
If you are trying to look at this in Internet Explorer 5 (or anything earlier), you are probably having a very difficult time. That one was done sometime in 2001 and is not supportable. Please download something newer. All of the browsers can be downloaded and used for FREE and will give you a much better experience all around than the IE5 legacy browser.
If you are using Firefox 1 you may also want to upgrade. That browser was superceded in Nov. 2006 and does not support the current standards for web development.
On Mac OSX:
I only spot check pages on the Mac. I don't worry as much about Mac users. The machines make it fairly easy to keep software updated, and I wouldn't expect as many legacy browsers to be on those machines (although there are an astonishing number of browsers out there for the Mac!). If you have a problem with one of these browsers on a Mac, let me know. This is something I am equipped to deal with.
If you are one of the poor souls still using Internet Explorer 5 on the Mac , it is time to change browsers. As of 2001, even Microsoft won't support that one anymore.
On Unix/Linux:
Um. No testing here. We run a FreeBSD server here at home, but it has very little in the way of creature comforts. It often runs for months without having a monitor directly connected to it. The site stats don't show a lot of activity in this area, so there isn't a lot of incentive to mess with this further. Again, if you have problems, let me know. There are things I can do that don't involve moving the Earth.