One in ten websites fail to provide access to non Internet Explorer browsers such as Firefox and risk alienating customers and suffer consequential revenue losses.

This is the primary finding of research undertaken by web testing specialist SciVisum, which examined a number of well-known sites using the Firefox browser and checked site compatibility with recognised web standards.

Of 100 UK leading consumer websites that SciVisum tested, three per cent were found to be turning away non Internet Explorer (IE) web browser users and seven per cent of the sites included non-standard code recognised only by Internet Explorer. Websites that turn away non Internet Explorers users include Jobcentreplus (www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk) and the Odeon (www.odeon.co.uk). Sites that embed non-standard web coding, typically recognisable to only Internet Explorer include British American Tobacco (www.bat.com) and the insurance arm of Lloyds TSB (www.insurance.co.uk).

SciVisum advises web developers to develop code only around the CSS2 web standard, the official Cascading Style Sheets 2 specification, presented by the World Wide Web Consortium. CSS2 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style such as fonts and spacing to web documents. By separating the presentation style of documents from the content of documents, CSS2 standardises web authoring and site maintenance. Non-standard code limits a websites' audience and alienates users of alternative web browsers.

"When webmasters design first for Internet Explorer and not standards-compliant browsers, they so often end up restricting user access to the website which has detrimental affects for a company. Surprisingly, after all these years, users of standards-compliant browsers are still faced with sites that do not support their browser or with a link suggesting they download Internet Explorer, a browser they had presumably chosen not to use," said Deri Jones, CEO of SciVisum.

Firefox, which has a reported 50 million, downloads since its launch in November 2004, now accounts for almost seven percent of the browsers in use today. Many industry experts expect it to reach ten per cent in the US this year - and it's growth has prompted Microsoft, who had not intended to release any major updates to Internet Explorer, to announce that version 7 is now planned. In Germany, where Internet users have been more willing to adopt alternatives to Microsoft, Firefox is already up to 24.2 percent. This rapid growth, which shows no sign of slowing down, has been attributed to Firefox's ease of use and its security features.

Developers who have made the move to standards-based design are now reaping the benefits in terms of time saved in reduced redesign time.

Guilty websites

• Odeon (www.odeon.co.uk), a major cinema chain has received criticism for months for accessibility issues - even now its' opening 'splash page' seems at first glance to be working fine but click on the 'enter' button and Firefox users are offered a blank page.
  
• On the Jobcentreplus (www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk) home page, Firefox users find that the 'Job search' button opens a new page, but the user can't perform a search, because the first choice "Select a Job Group from the list" is an empty box.
  
• Online insurance site, www.insurance.co.uk, run by Lloyds TSB works, but gives the user the visual impression that it is broken - menu items have 'missing images' icons in Firefox, but not IE.
  
• Similarly, a FTSE100 tobacco company, British American Tobacco's website (www.bat.com) effectively hides most of it's pages from Firefox users - their menu system doesn't show sub-menu choices if you're not using IE.

Most improved
Electrical retailer Powerhouse Online's new web design at www.powerhouse.co.uk went live in May, and it now no longer excludes any Firefox users. Likewise in the last 10 days, English Heritage at www.english-heritage.org.uk no longer forces Firefox browsers to a non-graphical version of the site.

Recommendations
To overcome some compatibility problems a web manager can plan for web testing to identify any non-standard coding lurking in their site, ready to clean it up at the next upgrade

Based on the findings, SciVisum made a number of broad recommendations to improve access to websites:

• Insist that your website developers check pages using standards-compliant browsers including Firefox first - not just Internet Explorer
  
• Move your site design to cascading style sheets CSS - these will make your site more accessible to the disabled, and will simplify the site development itself through separation of content and presentation
  
• If you're planning a total site redesign, do consider some of the now very feature rich Open Source content management systems - several give you pretty standards compliant websites out of the box - consider Plone (www.plone.org), Mambo (www.mamboserver.com) and several others
  
• When planning or upgrading 24/7 monitoring of the core user journeys on your site, ask your test house to explicitly report on any non-standard IE/Firefox issues they come across.

SciVisum undertook the web browser testing between May and June, 2005. All information in this release is correct at the time of issue.

[Excellent idea SciVisum has here. I think what is needed in the market is some companies undertaking evaluation and regular monitoring of web sites from the points of view of usability, security (including code review) and accessibility. I know of a few small companies offering these types of services but of none that offers all of them - and these companies are doing extremely well in their markets.

On top of SciVisum's recommendations I recommend using a browser tool called iCAB. It is a German browser which among other endearing qualities has the capability to analyse downloaded web pages for errors. --Ed].

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.scivisum.com
www.icab.de
www.getfirefox.com

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