Monday, June 26, 2006

Affiliate Marketing, My Website and the Firefox Incident!

So I am just about ready to go on vacation for about 2 weeks (sorry, no computer access for the trip, therefore, no posts for a couple of weeks) and I was at my dad's house wanting to show him my website: TheWebReviewer.com. Being an old geezer that he is (sorry dad!), he has his fonts on Internet Explorer set to large. To my shock (and HORROR!) I saw my website overwriting itself all over the place! This can't be? I have checked it out a hundred times with no problems. Further, my cool fonts were no longer visible. What happened???

We'll, it is simple: I did not do a good job making my website very robust I am afraid. My mistakes:

1) The CSS style sheets that I created where all "absolute" positions. This is fine as long as everyone else is using your settings, but this was not the case.

2) Avoid using non-standard Fonts and even "point" font sizes. Stick with simple, standard fonts (like Ariel and Times New Roman) or even the "default font". Defining 12 and 14 point font sizes seem to confuse some browsers, too. Use simpler font styles such as small, medium, large, etc.

I have now fixed this little mess (at probably the cost of many potentials buyers...If you website is not organized well, and in this case a mess, no one is going to stick around!). When designing your website, be sure to keep it simple, but also test it in multiple environments! Most people have Microsoft Internet Explorer pre-installed on their machines. A lot of people use Firefox as well, and at times, they format out differently. In general, I recommend Firefox over IE anyway.

1) IT'S FREE! To download it, just click the link in the right bar.

2) It seems to be more stable than IE (less crashing)

3) It is supposed to be less vulnerable to viruses and spyware.

4) It is fully integrated with all of the good Google tools (you should also install these on IE as well. Click the link in the right bar).

5) It isn't Microsoft (I know a lot of people who use Firefox just to spite Microsoft!).

My point? Be sure to use robust formatting and font types and sizes on your website and remember that just because it looks good on your browser does not mean that it will look good on everyones! Test it both in different browsers and viewing settings!

See ya in a couple of weeks!