Browsers
Display Information Differently
Browsers are HTML reading software.
But the problem is that not all browsers will display
the same HTML page identically.
This means that when you create pages for the Web, you
must be careful to check your pages on different platforms
(does it look different on a Mac?) and on different browsers
(does it look different in Netscape?)
Why do browsers display information
differently?
In the early days of the Web, a browser
did not even display text and images together in one screen.
Since then, there have been continual updates to the HTML
markup language. There is a group that oversees standards,
the World Wide Web Consortium, www.w3.com. Over time,
the group has made decisions on what new tags should be
adopted. The Web began with the basics, the tags we used
in class to mark up a resume into HTML. But eventually
as the Web gained popularity, there were requests for
more abilities. Designers, for example, wanted more control
over fonts, colors, and positioning of elements on the
screen. So new tags were adopted. Older browsers did not
understand the new tags and new versions of browsers were
released (Netscape 4.0, Explorer 4.0, Netscape 6.0, Explorer,
6.0 etc.).