I do freelance web development and front end dev is not my strongest point. This

Question

I do freelance web development and front end dev is not my strongest point. This question came to me in my recent fixed bid project.

Nowadays we use Jquery and Bootstrap and these take care of lots of cross browser stuff. Still, there are lots of errors in different browsers. It requires testing tools and a whole lot of other things to worry about.

Should it be explicitly mentioned that the resulting site should be tested for cross browser compatibility in a contract? Or

Does it come by default in the scope of the project?

How can we estimate hours spent in cross browser compatibility?

Edit: Some great answers here. But how should a scenario be handled when no browser discussions happened at all at the time of signing contract?

Explanation / Answer

In your contract, you should specify an explicit list of supported browsers. This will save you a lot of trouble, if later the customer complains that the page looks broken on his stone-age Windows XP notebook with IE6. (Read what happened to this guy.)

Since you use libraries, the intersection of their browser compatibility lists (jQuery, Bootstrap) is probably a good starting point for your own list. Be sure to mention specific browser versions rather than minimum versions: If, in two years from now, a new IE/Firefox/Chrome version is released that renders your webpage incorrectly, why should you have to fix it for free?

As soon as you include a list of supported browsers, testing for these browsers (and fixing any problems due to use of those browsers) is part of the project. Compatibility with other browsers is not in the scope of the project and must be ordered and payed extra.

The time (and cost) for this varies widely, depending whether it is, for example, a small fix for a tablet-variant of some recent webkit-based browser (low price) or adding IE6 compatibility to a complex HTML5 webpage (very high price).

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse I
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.