How To Debug CSS Cross-Platform Compatibility Problems

For all the functionality and flexibility of CSS as a web programming language, we can't really say that it is free of frustrations. We have all run into issues related to strange scroll bar behavior, unintended font styles, or features that work fine in one browser but end up crashing pages on others. This is when we need to resort to debugging, which means figuring out what the most sensible solutions might be to solve cross-platform problems.

Before we go into the details, we should talk about the underlying problem of cross-platform compatibility. Many web applications rely on specific browser features and CSS properties that are not universally available, and this causes much pain for web developers who want to write cross-platform code. It's not that we have to write platform-specific CSS: most of the time, writing cross-platform CSS will be sufficient. However, what we have to be aware of is that a lot of different features and CSS properties are not compatible among different browsers.

For instance, the overflow property will have different values depending on whether a browser uses scroll bars or not. This leads to many unexpected behaviors when writing a CSS style sheet and we'll have to figure out whether a particular cross-browser solution is necessary or just an artifact of browser quirks.

The easiest way to think about this is to ask the question "which browser(s) would I want to support?" Now let's get to the tools we can use to debug our code.

Browser-Specific Methods

Browsers come with features that make debugging easier, such as the ability to inspect the DOM tree, check for element types and their properties, and more. Some of these features are very useful to web developers and are probably available in every browser, like the ability to go to a specific tag or even to a particular element in the tree. Other features may be specific to a particular browser and may provide more detailed insights into the DOM structure.

A good tool to look at a page in an accessible way is an inspector that shows the current structure of a web page. Some of them are available as plug-ins in the web browser: Firefox (Preferences | Advanced | Network | Privacy and Security), Chrome (View | Developer | JavaScript | Show panel on web pages), Opera (Preferences | Advanced | Developer), and Safari (View | Developer | Show web inspector). Once you fire up these tools, you may want to head over to the October issue of Smashing Magazine, where you will find an incredibly detailed debugging guide written by Stephanie Eckles. For more information click here https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/10/guide-debugging-css/.