Browser bugs in building a prototype

Question

I am learning how to program and my goal is to build a simple functional prototype...I'm at the very beginning.

I am not concerned with the visual design at this stage, other than as it relates to being able to demonstrate the functionality.

My question is: do I need to worry about ironing out cross-browser bugs in the HTML/CSS, or can I do development on a single browser? (Perhaps a better way of asking this is does the back-end programming have any effect on which browser is displaying it).

Answer 1

The back-end programming will affect the way a given browser displays your page and there might well be two schools of thought on whether you should be picky about the browser compatibility issues.

On the one hand, if you're just finding your feet in web development it might be asking too much to expect to have a standards-perfect, cross-browser site or application every time. It might be better to focus on actually accomplishing a finished result and learning as much syntax and technique as possible.

On the other hand, it might be argued that it's a good idea to get into the habit of adopting good practices now and recognising the sorts of things that are going to give you headaches... probably when you view your page in Internet Explorer. This takes more time to reach a finished product, but it would teach you good habits up-front.

Really it comes down to your own approach and preferences. Do you want to be detail-oriented and turn out a polished result in a longer period of time, or would you prefer to just get to the finish line and identify issues on a case-by-case basis?

Answer 2

Do car prototypes have a working stereo, leather upholstery, chrome rims, dice, and other random stuff which does not demonstrate the functionality of the newly-designed car?

My rule of thumb is that if it takes you more than 10 minutes to make it look acceptable to others (I'm completely fine with a disgusting design when prototyping), you're spending too much time on the aesthetics and less time on the actual clockwork.

What good does a "pretty-looking" site do if it has no functional layout?

Answer 3

This depends on both your audience and on your tooling. If you are trying to support all users on all browsers, then you will certainly need to do testing on those browsers (although actively developing on those browsers may not be necessary), whereas if you only need to support WebKit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari) or WebKit-based browsers and Firefox, that is less testing that you need to do.

It also depends on your tooling. For example, if you are writing directly in HTML and CSS, then you are much more likely to run into browser compatibility issues. However, if you use a tool such as GWT , which can generate browser-specific output automatically, there are fewer such issues to deal with.

Note that you can use Selenium (aka WebDriver), to automatically test your code on multiple different browsers, even if you only actively develop within a single browser environment. That way, you can know if you've broken something, but not have to constantly manually test in multiple browsers.

Answer 4

If you are at the very beginning and only want a functional prototype, do not worry about cross browser HTML/CSS. In fact forget the CSS altogether and focus on printing just standard HTML. Since the visual design will change, focus on the content, styles can always be applied and switched later.

If you need Javascript/AJAX stuff I would recommend using a library like JQuery that has already solved many cross browser problems for you.

The back-end stuff "Perl, PHP, Python, etc" shouldn't care about the browser as it is simply printing text for the browser to render as it will.