I came across this district's homepage and had a difficult time understanding why, when using Netscape as my browser, it took the entire width of my 20" monitor (which is set to a resolution of 1024 x 768), to see their page. Then I saw the little notice in the right hand corner stating "Best viewed with Internet Explorer" and then I understood why. In my 5 years of web surfing I have never come across a site which was completely incompatible with Netscape.

Those of you who have been to my site, my students certainly do, know to cross check their web-page design work using different browser, browser versions, monitor resolutions (I require my students to design to the 640 x 480 format), and computers (PCs and Macs). Only the designer can determine what type of changes are required to make the site look presentable on the majority of computer systems.

You may question why I require my students to design to the 640x480 format. Well, there are many school districts, organizations, and individuals who have monitors less than 14 inches in size. I was reminded of this the other day when visiting a local elementary school. I happened to use one of their computers to search the Web for information concerning a NASA project. The monitor was 12 inches in size and the resolution was set to 640 x 480.

Resetting the monitor resized the web-pages so small that I had a difficult time reading the information (I remind my students that adults over 40 years of age are beginning to have vision problems and are beginning to wear bifocals). This is also a district which states on it's home page, "Best Viewed at 800x600"- like people are going to switch the resolution of their monitor or browser, to accommodate the site designer's misapplication of a major design principle. Trying to email NASA through this computer also illustrated the reason why web-sites need to be designed with the actual email address of pertinent contact people. To learn why, read the very first tip (Tip 1) in this series. When this section was written (approximately 1999) most computers were set for 640x480. Technology moves on which is why this site is being redesigned for the 800 x 600 format :-).

Anyway I digress. I have provide two different images of this district's home page. One is Netscape and the other is Internet Explorer (I.E.). These two screen shots have been reduced in size to fit the format of my web site. But the idea is to notice the distinct difference in layout between the two browsers. In fact in you look closely at the Netscape version you may notice there is overlapping of some of text.

Although I.E. is quite presentable, I have no idea where the navigation buttons on the right will take me, because no information is present unless I roll over them with my cursor. If my students set up a navigational scheme like the one employed here, I require the pages to be redesigned.

In defense of this school district, I have revisited the site and must say, there has been a remarkable improvement on the design, but there are still a few inconsistencies when using different browsers. Viewing through the two different browsers named previously, yields nearly the same result. However when viewed with Netscape the site lacks most of its white background color. This view illustrates the new homepage.