What is a backward compatible design?
The design is backward compatible, if the design continues to work with earlier versions of a language, program, code, or software. When the design is backward compatible, the signals or data that has to be changed does not break the existing code. For instance, a (mythical) web designer decides he should make some changes, because the fun of using Javascript and Flash is more important (to his customers) than his backward compatible design. Or, alternatively, he decides, he has to make some changes because he doesn’t have the resources to maintain multiple styles of backward compatible web design. Therefore, our mythical web designer’s decision will inconvenience some users, because some of the earlier versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape will not display his web pages properly (as there are some serious improvements in the newer versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape that make the older versions of these browsers incompatible with, for example, DHTML). This is when we say,
