Do websites need to look the same in all browsers?

Unless this is your first visit to our website, you might have noticed that it’s had facelift. Two of the multitude of things that happen here before anything goes live are: our developers go on a bug hunt and get rid of any creepy crawlies that shouldn’t be there, and then there’s also the dreaded designer checks. Out comes the ruler and magnifying glass (also known as Firebug) as we scrutinise every last pixel.

Whilst checking over our website I was faced with the dilemma of Safari and Internet Explorer not wanting to play nice, and then I was posed with the question “is it okay if it looks different in Safari?” Um, no? Well, at least that’s what I initially thought, but then do websites need to look exactly the same in all browsers?

There’s a phrase Russell likes to use when we’re working on personas – “my baby must be perfect” and somehow I’d ended up wearing that user hat whilst multitasking playing the client as well as the designer. As I was sat in front of the PC and Mac clicking back and forth, the differences were staring at me like a lighthouse beacon (in reality it’s only a couple of pixels give or take but I’m a designer, we’re dramatic). To add to my dilemma making Safari match pixel perfectly would mean having the website not validate – this ensures the website is as future proof as possible and functions properly for as many users as possible. Great.

After realising this wasn’t really one of those rock-paper-scissor decisions, I took my client fedora off and wore my designer sombrero. We always say to never treat the interweb as print, yet somehow I had managed to forget this… pesky fedora.

It’s impossible to strive for 100% pixel perfection when converting designs into HTML. That’s just a reality of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML to you and me).
Users will all be on different monitors and different browsers with different settings. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that websites need to look substantially the same in browsers; they just don’t need to match pixel for pixel. It’s the same user experience, regardless of browsers, which is key for everyone. It’s important that the website is simple, easy and intuitive to use.

All users have individual objectives. It’s an absolute must that they can complete these as quickly as possible when visiting our website. These objectives could be as simple as:

• What do they do?
• Are they any good?
• How close are they round the corner from us?
• Have they got any good experience in x?

As long as these objectives are met, a few minor pixels here or there won’t make a difference to the overall user experience; however, allocating the all important finite budget and resources from focusing on user-centred design, copy and calls to actions will. After all, a dose of imperfection is always right sometimes.