Have you ever noticed that your website looks different on someone else’s computer?  It’s not wildly different but it’s just not the same.  The colors might be darker or lighter.  Maybe you can’t see as much of the home page without scrolling down.  The font might even look like it’s a slightly different size. 

These differences are normal and can be caused by a number of different factors:

• Browsers – The most popular web browser is Internet Explorer (IE) but there are a number of others.  Also each browser has different versions.  For example, my default browser is IE6.  But now there’s an IE7.  Websites can look different on different browsers or even on different versions of the same browser.
• Screen Size – Different screen sizes can cause your website to be displayed differently.  The same goes for different screen resolution settings on the same size browser. 
• Computer Types – The most popular computer operating systems come from Microsoft.  However Apple has a large and devoted following.  Websites can look very different when viewed on computers with different operating systems.  In my experience this causes the largest differences in website presentation.
• Color, Brightness and Contrast Settings – These settings vary from computer to computer and just like all the other factors in this article can cause websites to look different.

So what’s a person to do?  Part of my job is to keep all of these factors in mind.  I look at your website in different browsers and in different screen resolutions.  So while your website may look slightly different on different computers – it will look good on all of them.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 12th, 2007 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Websites 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.