What is "cross-browser"

Cross-browser refers to the ability of a website, Web application, HTML constructor or or side-client script to support multiple browsers.

This application must be built through a form of programming that uses technologies compatible with any web browser that supports the W3C specifications.

The term was widely used in the 1990s because of the Browsers War and meant that the site built with this idea had the ability to be viewed by both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, the major browsers at the time. During this period new features were added to the browsers without any coordination between the people involved. This caused some browsers to support some particular feature and worked differently in each one.

The term is still used, but less often. The main reasons are:

• the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator have support for HTML 4.0 and CSS 1;
• improved compatibility of the DOM manipulation technique that have become the preferred method for building side-client scripts;
• the browser market has expanded and asked for greater compatibility with Cross-browser. Nowadays a site that follows the W3C standards normally supports the latest versions of Firefox, Opera browsers and Safari, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator as the same have fully or partially adopted the W3C standard.