There are many factors that affect the final presentation of your site on the Web, many of which are beyond the Web designer's control. For example, your audience might be using all kinds of different computer systems with or without a capacity for displaying graphics. Your audience may also have different types of connections to the Web, different modem speeds, and different preferences settings in their Web browsers. While you may not be able to control these factors, you can preview the design of your pages in different Web browsers and provide alternative ways for viewing your site.
Claris Home Page provides two ways to preview a page as you're designing it. You can use Preview Page mode to display your page in Claris Home Page as it might appear in a browser. And you can use Preview in Browser mode to display your page in one or two browsers you have set up on your computer. To use this mode, you don't need to be connected to the Web. However, there are some things, such as external links, CGI scripts, certain applets, and form interaction, etc. that you must test on the Web server in order to know that they work and appear the way you planned them.
Note You must have a browser installed on your computer to be able to use the Preview in Browser feature.
You can test your pages for how they may appear to people using monitors set to lower resolutions by using the Size Window feature in Claris Home Page.
To use the Size Window feature in Claris Home Page:
Each browser interprets the HTML of your Web pages slightly different from other browsers. It's a good idea to test your pages in as many Web browsers as possible. As you create your Web pages in Claris Home Page, you can see how they'll look in a browser using the Preview in Browser mode. When you choose this option, Claris Home Page starts the browser application that is set in the system registry (Windows) or whichever is installed-Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator-(Macintosh) and displays the page in the browser window. Claris Home Page uses this browser as the default until you change the setting. See Previewing your work for more information on changing the default browser or adding a second default browser.
There are a number of Web browsers available that work on the Windows, Mac OS, and UNIX platforms, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, NetCruiser, Mosaic, and the America Online (AOL) browser. Some Web browsers are commercial programs and others are available free of charge.
The same page viewed with different browsers will have different results in terms of what features they support. For example, not all browsers will support tables, and things like color, fonts, formatting styles and sizing may differ from browser to browser (especially across platforms). As a general rule, older browsers do not support newer HTML elements, such as frames or client-side image maps, and multimedia effects, such as animated GIFs or right-aligned images. If you suspect that some of your intended audience will have older browsers, you might consider having alternative text-only pages of your site they can view.
Note Claris Home Page uses the Rainbow or Safety Palette, which is supported by all browsers, by default. Claris Home Page also supports several color palettes that you can use to build your Web pages. However, not all palettes are supported uniformly by all Web browsers. For example, Microsoft Internet Explorer supports fewer colors than Netscape Navigator. If you use an unsupported color for your text, the browser will not display the color of the text. Make sure to test your pages on many browsers.
Web servers are computers that store Web sites and respond to requests from different browsers over the Internet. The server is always turned on and running 24 hours a day. Your entire Web site will reside on a Web server when it's published.
There are some things in your Web site that you can't test until you actually upload the site to the Web server. For example, if your site includes elements that require a CGI script to work (such as a form, a searchable database, or a server-side image map), you'll need to test how it works with the CGI script on the Web server.
Web page elements you will want to test once your files are on a server include:
You can view an estimated download time of these elements in Claris Home Page. For more information, see Using the Statistics window.