Almost every website that has ever been created looks different in different browsers. 59% of the visitors of CourtneyTuttle.com use Firefox 2.0.0, 17.8% use Internet Explorer 7.0, 13.6% use Internet Explorer 6.0, 1.6% use Safari, and about 1% use Opera. When I first created my new layout, it looked terrible in IE6! The header looked really bad – IE6 showed it as about 200 pixels tall even though it’s only about 80px.

Where is gets interesting is when you start to look at sites that don’t get a lot of blog traffic. If you look at the browser stats for HowToMobile.com (my current case study) you will get totally different stats. The overwhelming majority of visitors to that site use either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Internet Explorer 7.0.

Do you know what your site looks like in all of those browsers? It’s very common to have your layout look totally messed up in IE6, even though it looks perfect in IE7. Do you know what happens when someone finds your site and sees a messed up layout? They click the back button asap.

My Browser Arsenal

I like to make sure that my site looks decent in all of these browsers, because I get hits from all of them. IE5.5 isn’t very common anymore, but I still see hits from people using it every once in a while.

This is a screen shot of the upper left hand corner of my desktop. Whenever I’m working on a new design, I check it in all of these browsers to make sure that it looks ok in all of them.

The trickiest browser by far for me is Internet Explorer 6. It usually takes me some fiddling to get my layout designs looking good in IE6. I really wish that Microsoft would force everyone to upgrade because it’s a lot easier to design for IE7.

How To Run Both IE6 and IE7 On The Same Computer

The problem you’re going to run into is that Internet Explorer 7.0 replaces Internet Explorer 6.0. For a while I kept IE6 on one of my computers and IE7 on a different one, but that got really annoying so I started looking for another solution, which I found.

I found a page that has a download that allows you to install the old Internet Explorer browsers without replacing IE7. If you don’t have IE7 yet, I would get it before using this program. You can find the download here: multiple internet explorer browsers. Look for a link labeled ‘Download Multiple IE installer‘.

Once you download the installer, run it. The program will allow you to choose which versions of IE you want to install (none of them will replace the IE7 that you already have):

I would choose at least IE6, IE5.5 isn’t used that much but there are a few old timers still using it.

After you have a look, let everyone know how it looked! Do any of your sites look funny in any of the browsers? Are you having a problem getting something to look good in a certain browser? Now is your chance to ask!