Question

When building web stuff, how do developers deal with users on older browsers, smartphones, etc?

Answer 1

Very carefully... :p.

Generally you target a specific class of browsers for your main site, which is usually dictated by what version of Internet Explorer you want to support. We support IE8+ which isn't *that* bad.

A lot of times for smartphones servers will serve a specific mobile version of the content.

A browser is identified by what's called a "User Agent" string that the server can see and route correspondingly.

Answer 2

how do you test each browser?

Answer 3

So one method of dealing with it is to build different 'views' of the site, and have the server switch the different classes of users (good browsers, bad browsers) to the respective view?

Answer 4

@Tomas just open the site up in each and see if it works. Most browsers have "Developer Tools" for looking in-depth at things. Firefox doesn't, but you can get Firebug, the most helpful addon ever.

@george, that's a definite possibility. I would recommend not going to crazy with that though (having a site for each browser would be a pain to maintain). I'd recommend having one "Desktop" version (for IE, firefox, chrome, etc) and maybe a "Mobile" version (if you care about mobile).

Answer 5

Know your target audience, if you have an existing site, use analytics to find out what User Agents your users are using. You approach will vary based on that.

If you are developing a new site make your best guesses on what the target audience will be using, do your homework.

Developing a mobile and desktop version may or not be needed. Depending on your site, you could try to use a "Responsive" design that will adapt to the User Agent. You can find a lot on this topic via Google. From there you would want to figure out how far back you need to go with IE support. Again, the user of analytics will help you to decide what fixes are worth it.

Answer 6

The views are one thing. Pretty-wise, that can be handled with CSS. Although there are proprietary extensions to watch out for.

Mobile vs. desktop, you may have to cut back on the content, or navigate through it differently. Phone screens are pretty small, and widgets big enough for a finger REALLY take up a disproportionate amount of screen real estate.

JavaScript can be a real headache. Depending on it's complexity, and the age of the browser you want to support, you may have several versions of the same code. Ten years ago ( before DOM1 ) it usually wasn't worth the effort to write for both Netscape and IE. The good old days!