Website Compatibility (The technical bit).
Don't worry, you don't need to understand this......
Because of the market share of modern browsers, the compatibility of your website with the viewers can be restricted. For instance, a website that is designed for the majority of websurfers will be limited to the use of valid XHTML 1.0 Strict or older, Cascading Style Sheets Level 1, and 1024x768 display resolution. This is because Internet Explorer is not fully W3C standards compliant with the modularity of XHTML 1.1 and the majority of CSS beyond 1. A target market of alternative browser (e.g. Firefox, Safari and Opera) users allow for more W3C compliance and thus a greater range of options for a web designer. All the websites I create are fully XHTML and CSS compliant allowing for the compatibility issues of modern browsers to be avoided as much as possible.
Another restriction on webpage design is the use of different Image file formats. The majority of users can support GIF, JPEG, and PNG (with restrictions). Again Internet Explorer is the major restriction here, not fully supporting PNG's advanced transparency features, resulting in the GIF format still being the most widely used graphic file format for transparent images. To avoid image restrictions all the sites I create are carefully checked to make sure the images are of the correct format.
Many website incompatibilities go unnoticed by some website designers!
