Most people have a favourite web browser and the reasons can be anything from liking the functionality or that they’ve got it set up a certain way. There certainly are a number of options and you can go crazy if you want to try and ‘choose’ between them.

General Rules

Whatever browser you have, you should update it at least twice a year, if not more often. Fortunately a number of them do so directly but in the cases of some older browsers you will need to do this manually. The other good news is that newer browsers do mean both better functionality and usability for you and also will display the latest funky websites as they are intended. To find out which version you are running find ‘Help’ and then choose ‘About’ and a window should pop up with some kind of version number.

Why? Well, simply put a browser is both a window for you onto the internet but also a window from the Internet to you and it is a constant race to ensure the browsers are as secure as possible. It is a fallacy to believe that you need to click on something for it to be downloaded onto your machine or to have some adverse effect, so the best protection is an updated browser with minimal holes!

Major Browsers

Internet Explorer - www.microsoft.com/ie/

Often vilified for not sticking to ‘standards’ on the web and setting its own, Internet Explorer is somewhat of a flawed gem. Unfortunately for web designers and possibly consumers too it is the most widely used browser out there, though its market share is falling from a near 90% to around 55% currently.

If you are using version 5.0 and version 6.0 you really need to upgrade, as they are no longer secure. You should be using version 7.0 and above. The latest is Version 9.0 and is both faster, more interesting and better at displaying sites according to standards.

Mozilla Firefox - www.firefox.com

An increasingly popular browser, around 21.5% of people use this Open Source (i.e. free) software which is constantly updated and revised. Additionally there are several add-ons you can get that do everything from turning pages of images into a 3D wall (Cool Iris) to displaying the weather as you browse (Forecastfox). It is also quite easy to customise with different themes.

Firefox automatically updates itself with the latest version and also updates all the little add-ons. The current version is 4.0.1.

Safari - www.apple.com/safari

Once only the preserve of Mac users, Safari can now be found on Windows and other platforms and has a market share of around 7%. It has quite a slick interface though does tend to be slower than other browsers for Windows users. Also on a Windows machine the fonts might appear a bit bloated, i.e. as though all text is bold.

The current version of Safari is 5.0

Google Chrome - www.google.co.uk/chrome

While it’s only been around for a few years, Google Chrome is rapidly growing in popularity, and is currently used by around 12% of users. Chrome borrows heavily from Firefox (which Google supported, partly explaining its huge growth and popularity) but has some neat tricks. It is particularly good for those with small screens and who have browsers that tend to crash. Because if one site crashes it only crashes one part of the browser, not the whole thing.

Google Chrome is rapidly updated, and the current version is 11.0

Opera - www.opera.com

Similar to FireFox in approach though quite a slick looking browser. Roughly 2% of users enjoy it and it is heavily customisable. Honestly, we hardly use it but it’s there if you’re interested.

The current version of Opera is 11.10

Other Browsers

Browsers aren’t restricted to those on PCs or Macs. You’ll find cut-down versions on phones and tablets, sometimes the full thing. Indeed there are also some accessible versions for those who have impaired sight, such as Lynx.

It’s all very well to structure your page nicely but most importantly it matters what you say and how you do so. It’s a simple question of ‘Why’, What’ and ‘How’:

• Why would anyone want to read this page?
• What are you saying and why should the user care? Do you have the ‘authority’ or an interesting view?
• How should it be presented? If you have an organisational site you need to ensure the writing is consistent with the organisational voice, that you try to avoid expressing personal opinions

Examples

• http://news.bbc.co.uk has well-written articles that adopt these principles

Headers structure your page in a visually pleasing manner, enable search engines to read them, and increase the accessibility of your content (people using screen-readers can determine how the content is structured without seeing it).

In your Content Management System you should notice at the top of a page you are editing a ‘Style’ drop-down. There are headers 1 to 6, which often have colours and sizes associated with them. Header 1 is the highest priority and often the biggest size. If you can imagine a normal office document then the title at the top might be a ‘Header 1′, the major sections ‘Header 2′ and under those major sections you would further split content into ‘Header 3′ and so on.

We strongly recommend you always structure your content using headers for the sections. For example, the title of this page is a ‘Header 2′, the main sections (‘Overview’, ‘Principles’, ‘Headers’ and ‘Content’) are ‘Header 3′ and finally the end bits (‘Examples, ‘Related Advice’ and ‘Links’) are ‘Header 4′.

Examples

Header 1

Header 2

Header 3

Header 4

Header 5

Header 6

This is paragraph text

1. the first sentence or two should both give an overview of the article and mention key concepts/ keywords you will address. Ideally you’ll give some form of conclusion too
2. keep it around 200-400 words. Unless you’re writing a news article, this is really quite short! Ideally it should be maximum of two screen-scrolls on the smallest computer screen. If what you are writing is longer it will either need to be split into separate pages, or you should write a synopsis as your page and have the article as a downloadable file (eg. a PDF)
3. remember that people don’t tend to read long pages online and will most likely skim, so you might need to reiterate where you’ve got to a couple times so people don’t miss it
4. paragraphs should generally only be the equivalent of 2-3 lines on a Word document as people skim-read, think more ‘newspaper column’
5. pictures (with relevant captions) are the web’s 1,000 words if not more. Choose one or two to really set your page off
6. do NOT plagiarise without giving credit. Firstly it is wrong and secondly people are becoming increasingly litigious online
7. do NOT copy paste from Google Images, as most web content and pictures are copyrighted and the first you’ll hear about making a mistake is a legal request for money from the rights holder (it will be for a lot of money!)