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Design Decisions – Cross-Browser Compatible vs Transcendence Design

December2

The internet that we know and love today is very different to the one we knew five years ago. Todays designs are governed by standards and advancements in technology allow us to send large amounts of data across the web in the blink of an eye.

Five years ago this story was very different, designer’s where building websites that were not always cross browser compatible, accessible or in fact syntactically correct. So how has this movement in web standards come about and how is it affecting the way in which we design today?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). It is arranged as a consortium where member organisations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the world wide web. Founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (founder of the world wide web), the W3C has outlined a number of standards such as CSS, XHTML, and XML that are the recommended standard to design by, thus ensuring the greatest level of cross browser compatibility. However, the W3C leaves the decision to follow the recommendations entirely up to the browser manufacturers, which as a result has left a partial or even a completely different implementation of the standards across variant browsers. So even though there are a set of standards for designing content for the world wide web, it is not always viable to fully implement them as different browsers interpret these recommendations differently (some more so than others).

So in order to ensure that a design displays identically across the broad spectrum of web browsers now available, designers often resort to implementing “hacks” in their code in order to get the same look across all browsers. This is all well and good, but we now find ourselves back at square one now with pages that are not valid by the recommendations outlined by the standards according to the W3C.

So in a way by complying with the standards set by the W3C, you are in fact limiting what you are able to do with a design due to not all browsers being able to support what you implement. So the question still remains; can we design websites that are both compliant with the W3C recommendations and also maintain cross browser compatibility? Transcendence design attempts to answer this question.

I first came across this concept when reading the book; “Transcending CSS – The fine art of web design” by Andy Clarke. In his book, Andy explains how expecting the same result across a variety of different web browsers is restricting the possibilities of design. He illustrates this view with the example of the emergence of High-Definition TV, by saying: “If you choose not to upgrade your equipment to HDTV, you are not excluded from watching your favourite show; you simply see a slightly inferior but perfectly acceptable picture quality because your hardware is less up-to-date.”

So by applying the concept of transcendence to web design, users will still receive the same content as each other, however users who have “upgraded” to the latest browser will receive a “richer experience”. Those who choose for one reason or another not to upgrade cannot, and in fact, should not expect to receive the same experience as those who have chosen to do so. He demonstrates this idea on his website; www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk, where by users receive a completely different design when they are not using a “modern” browser such as Firefox, Safari or Opera. Transcendence builds upon the “MOSe” concept (Mozilla, Opera, Safari enhancement), where by these browsers are recognised or where recognised at the time of the MOSe’s conception as being the most modern browsers, and being the most capable of handling CSS in the way that it should be handled. Designers would design a “benchmark” standard that would work across all browsers, but add further enrichment for MOSe browsers.

The same can be said about transcendence design; where by the most modern browser receives the best features and design. However by comparison, transcendence goes in the opposite direction to MOSe in its execution. The benchmark for the design is for the best browsers, and older browsers receive a reduced quality of this benchmark.

Overall transcendence is attempting to push forth the progression in browser development, by using and implementing the latest supported features of web markup languages. I believe in this concept myself, and have tried to apply it to my works in a variety of ways. The trouble with the concept though is that big organisations are unlikely to apply it, as there is a level of expectation from their customers to receive exactly the same service as each other, which includes the company website.

So which method is the best or even the correct way to design, Cross- Browser Compatible or Transcendence Design? I guess it depends solely upon the context in which it is used. CBC is possibly more suited towards organisations who are expected to provide the same experience (all be it a dull one) to everyone, where as transcendence is more suited towards the personal sites. But by working together towards the goal of all browsers supporting the same standards, and hopefully supporting them in the same way, will allow us as web designers to experience the same level of freedom in which other designers are so privileged. I believe that the only way to get there is through the application of design concepts such as Transcendence Design.