CSS and Browser Compatibility

A note of caution when using CSS: Test! Test! Test! CSS is an incredibly powerful technology, but Web browsing software does not support all of the CSS options and, in fact, some of your pages may be displayed incorrectly or may not display at all in older browsers. It is therefore important to test your CSS-formatted pages on as many Web browsers (and operating systems) as possible.

As a general rule of thumb, the following is a list of CSS formatting options that are generally considered to be safe to use for most browsers:

• Font faces (typeface styles)
• Font colors
• Font sizes (always use pixel-sizes for most consistent results)
• Font weight
• Font styles
• Colors (3-hex or 6-hex codes, or color names)
• Text alignment (left, right, center)
• Padding (all except padding on in-line elements)
• Border styles
• Border colors

See Netscape's Browser Compatibility Chart for an excellent comparison on how several popular Web browsers support CSS.