Of Browsers and Standards

When you view a web page like this one, you're using a program called a web browser. Web browsers exist to translate a web page's complex code into nicely formatted and laid-out text. This code is designed according to recommendations written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization of software companies, web designers, and other interested parties.

The two icons at the bottom of each page:

Valid XHTML 1.0
Valid CSS 2

Indicate that this site is designed to be complaint with W3C recommendations. Compliant sites are designed to work in any browser.

Unfortunately, no browser completely implements the XHTML and CSS web-design languages, let alone without any bugs. The Internet Explorer browser in particular has many mistakes and omissions, but even the best browsers are missing a few properties or have a couple quirks.

I've gone to great lengths to make sure this site will render perfectly, or nearly so, in all common browsers. The following table outlines the browsers I've tested with and their levels of support; the row for your browser has been given a gray background.

BrowserNotes
Browsers based on Mozilla's Gecko engine have excellent standards support, and have received the most extensive testing. (I use Firefox as my primary browser, and recommend it to all web users; it is available free at GetFirefox.com.)
  • Opera 7.54
  • Opera 8 (beta)
Opera also has excellent support for standards, and should display the site perfectly. Some of the new features of Opera 8, such as text-to-speech, aren't currently being catered for.
  • Apple Safari 1.2
  • Apple Safari 1.1
  • Other KHTML/WebKit Browsers
These versions of Safari display the site almost perfectly. The Lauren Royal logo is missing from printed pages, but otherwise they work fine.
IE 5.5 and 6 have very minor problems, such as link underlines not looking the way they should. Other than that, they render perfectly.
Microsoft Internet Explorer (Windows) 5.0 Printing may not work properly in this browser; otherwise it's very similar to IE 5.5 and 6.
Microsoft Internet Explorer (Mac) 5.23 Though I have tried to make sure the site will work in this browser, IE 5 on the Mac is full of hard-to-catch bugs; at least one can result in content not appearing on your screen. The site should work in this browser, but I'd recommend the free Safari or Firefox browsers instead. Printing may not work properly in Mac IE.
All Other Browsers Other browsers should at least be able to display this site's content in a readable form, although they may not be able to display all of the site's effects. If the navigation bar is hidden, you may have to use the site map to navigate.

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