Will it work on all devices and browsers?

It will work on current phones, tablets and desktop browsers, with layouts that adapt to the screen. If your users rely on older devices or a particular browser, we agree that in Discovery and test for it.

“All devices” is never quite literal. Nobody has tested on every phone ever made, so here’s what it means in practice.

What’s covered by default

As a starting point, we support the current and previous major versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge. That covers the large majority of people using the web today, on desktop and on mobile.

Every layout is responsive, which means it rearranges itself to fit the screen. A page that shows three columns on a laptop stacks them on a phone. Nobody should have to pinch and zoom to read it. Our design services page shows how we approach it.

We test on real iPhone and Android devices, not just simulators. Phones behave differently in the hand, especially with touch, slow networks and small screens.

Your users decide, not ours

The right list depends on who uses your product. Discovery is where we find that out.

A consumer app for under-thirties can assume recent phones. A tool for care workers, warehouse staff or a public body often can’t. Those users may be on old handsets, shared tablets or a locked-down work laptop. If yours are, tell us early. It’s cheap to plan for and expensive to retrofit.

Two of our public projects show the range. ExecSecure drivers carry iOS and Android apps across 112 cities in 57 countries. Each one reports the car’s position continuously, accurate to about three feet.

Electragram went the other way. Its guests never download anything. Invitations, replies and reminders all work from an email, SMS or WhatsApp message they’ve already opened. For a guest list at a premiere, that beats asking anyone to install an app.

Older browsers

Internet Explorer is no longer supported by Microsoft, and we don’t build for it. Supporting very old browsers means extra code, extra testing and slower pages for everyone else.

If a specific older environment really matters, such as a client’s locked-down corporate setup, we’ll scope it in Discovery. We’ll tell you what it costs and what it trades off.

Apps and websites behave differently

There are two broad ways to get onto a phone.

A native app is built for iPhone and Android specifically, and installed from a store. Its support depends on which operating system versions it targets, not which browser people use.

Starter gives you an app or a website, and Growth gives you both. Do you build apps for both iPhone and Android? covers the choice in detail. Plenty of first products don’t need native at all.

After launch

The list of phones keeps moving after you launch. New screen sizes and operating system versions turn up, and something that worked perfectly can break after an update you didn’t make.

Someone needs to check the product against each one. Do you offer ongoing maintenance and updates? explains who that can be. Speed and accessibility across devices get their own article in will my site be fast, accessible and found on Google?