It's important to keep in mind that when you develop a web site, you have to cater to the widest possible audience...not everybody has the same browser you do, with the same graphics settings, or the same operating system. It might look great on your screen, but it might look lousy on somebody elses.

Try to test your pages to see how they look with:

• a different size screen
• a text-only browser (or images turned off)
• a different colour resolution
• a different browser with a minimal feature set

Some issues that can come up are the use of extended features such as image maps, frames, javascript, java applets, or operating system-specific controls...make sure you provide alternate coding for these. Test your site with a small browser window, then try testing it maximized...sometimes tiled backgrounds or positioning of images can change in a way you didn't anticipate.

But most importantly, don't insist that people view your site under ideal conditions...imposing requirements on your viewers guarantees that somebody somewhere will be turned away, and they'll probably be annoyed (and annoyance has a way of spreading through the grapevine). The web makes it very easy to find a competitor, and if your competitor has a browser neutral site, they'll probably get the business.