Browser Compatibility
Skins@Hive World Terra doesn't support some browsers and not others, instead it works in a way that is designed to allow everyone to view and access the pages. Need to use a text browser such as Lynx or a PDA? not a problem, the design should degrade gracefully to simple text.
Unfortunately, although standards either degrade well or are rendered spotlessly in good programs, some notable exceptions make a real mess of their attempts. To stop semi-compliant browsers rendering a complete mess, they are also provided with the 'Safe Mode' text version of the website.
If you are viewing this website in 'safe mode' and want to view it as it is intended then please download and install a standards compliant browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Opera (or if you are using a Mac, try Camino). If you are a windows user and really want to stick with IE for whatever reason, please download the latest version (or at least IE5).
Supported Browsers
The following browsers should correctly render the site in either full or near full styling.
Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ 
Firefox is the standard browser used to design and test this site. It has excellent CSS and XHTML support and renders the site correctly. Previous versions should also render correctly (as they use the Gecko rendering engine) but are currently untested.
Known issues: None.
Mozilla Suite 0.9+ 
Further details to follow, but Mozilla 0.9 (built mid-June 2001) almost perfectly renders the site. Very impressive for a browser that is nearly 4 years old at the time of writing
Known Issues: Early builds of Mozilla do not support the :first-child pseduo-element, and so extra slants appear at the top of the left boxes column in the default skin
Netscape 7 
With the return of it's latest browser, Netscape support a lot of CSS, more than IE, but don't render it all perfectly.
Known Issues: due to the :first-child rule that removes the :before content from the first box on the left, Netscape decides to lose the left padding on the title. The content is still readable.
Opera v8 
As would be expected of the latest version of Opera, the site renders correctly
Known Issues: None
Opera v7.x
The 7.x builds support the :before pseudo-element that their predecessors didn't.
Known issues: Opera 7.1 doesn't render the content in the correct place, leaving margins in between the generated content and the content it is being generated before. The page is still perfectly readable, but the boxes on the left lose their effect.
Opera v5 and v6 
Both of these earlier versions of Opera support the child celector, but not :before, leading them to merge the styles. This doesn't destroy anything, but isn't a perfect rendering of what is supposed to be shown.
Known issues: None.
Internet Explorer 5.0+ 
Internet Explorer supposedly supports all of CSS1, but in reality it only supports all of a subset of CSS1. Even IE6 doesn't support useful parts of CSS2.1, and so doesn't get the full impact of this website's design.
Known Issues: IE5.0 has some issues with its box model, and so widths may be a pixel or two out. Also, all current versions of IE do not correctly support alpha transparency on 24bit PNG images, and so on certain pages (such as this one) will incorrectly render grey backgrounds to the icons.
Unsupported browsers - Known
The following browsers are classed as "unsupported". Either they don't correctly render the CSS (understanding enough to do part but not all of a rule correctly) or they are fed a 'safe mode' version of our pages to make sure they don't do bad things with it.
Netscape Navigator 4.x 
Although it was once a leader in the Browser Wars, Netscape Navigator 4.x (or Netscape Communicator as the suite was known) is now far too old to support most of the widely used CSS. As such, it is giving a 'safe mode' unstyled page.
Internet Explorer for Mac
Although it has superior CSS rendering to IE for Windows in many ways, it is an untestable browser, since I don't have a Mac to run it on. However, it does get caught out by the same CSS hiding technique as is used to hide the styling from early Netscapes, and so will get an unstyled page.
Internet Explorer v4 and below
As with IE for Mac, all styles are hidden to it, and so it renders a simlified page.
Unsupported browsers - Unknown
The following browsers are untestable by myself, either because I don't have access to them, I don't have visitors who use them or I don't have a computer that will run them. As such they are completely unsupported. If you find a browser that works, please email me and I'll list it!
All browsers that are not listed above can be considered to be in this category
