The Scottish Government takes the issue of browser compatibility very seriously, and every effort is made to ensure that our web site is usable by everyone.
In order to support as wide a range of browsers as possible and allow users of all abilities (including those with a visual impairment or physical disability) to access www.scotland.gov.uk, the site has been developed according to recognised standards set down by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). One of these standards is for the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS2) so that the site supports any browser that in turn supports this standard.
Some browsers, particularly earlier versions (Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 for example), either do not, or only partially support, this standard. These browsers might not display this site's text and graphics properly.
Most browser manufacturers allow you to upgrade to newer versions for free. If you are able to upgrade to a modern browser then we recommend that you do so.
For more information see:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer ( for Windows and for Mac)
- Netscape (available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux)
- Mozilla or Firefox (available for Windows, Max OS X, Linux, OS/2, AIX, Solaris, HPUX, FreeBSD, OpenVMS)
- Opera (available for Windows, Mac, Linux, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, QNX, Smartphones and PDAs)
- Safari (Mac OS X)
- Konqueror (Linux)
All the main pages of this site have been tested for compatibility with the recent versions of the above browsers as well as with Opera for Small Screen Devices.
Major redesigns are tested for compatibility with a wide range of browsers. Our current test suite is:
Windows XP
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
- Mozilla 1.7.3
- Firefox 1.0
- Opera 7.54 and 8.5
- Netscape 7.2
- Netscape 6.2
- Netscape 4.77 (basic styles only)
- Lynx 2.8.3 (text only)
Windows 2000
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 (problems displaying some Scottish Government pages currently being investigated)
Apple Mac OS X
- Safari 1.2
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2
- Firefox 1.0
- Mozilla 1.7.3
- Camino 0.8.1
- Opera 7.54
- Netscape 7.2
SUSE Linux 9.2 (KDE 3.2.1)
- Konqueror 3.2.1
- Firefox 1.0
- Opera 7.54