The internet is an awesome place and building things for is it fun, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t frustrating at times.
There are very few places where frustration manifests itself more than is making sure your design or user interface looks solid across the board of browsers.
For the web being a ubiquitous platform, building things for it is all but. There are several tools that I’ve used to verify my interfaces look solid across the board.
Check ‘em out.
Browser Shots
BrowserShots will run your site through four operating systems and more web browsers than a single person would ever use. It will then generate a page with screen shots of your sites for your review.
Adobe BrowserLab
BrowserLab is a web application that will display your site under the rendering engine of other popular browsers. Aside from showing screenshots, it also allows you to zoom and pan around the site, save screenshots, and it integrates with Dreamweaver.
IETester
IETester allows you to load up not only your site but browse the entire web in four versions of Internet Explorer simultaneously. You can check out your site in IE5.5, 6, 7, and 8. I’d say this is a most for anyone that builds for the mainstream audience.
You can take browser testing to the extreme, too: There are times where I’ve setup a virtual machine in order to see how the site looks on another operating system.
But that’s just me. Call me compulsive.
You’re compulsive.
Just checking the post to make sure somebody had typed this.
You guys are awesome.
Beautiful. Yesterday I borrowed my friends computer to fix an IE float problem…How else am I supposed to know what it looks like ya know? Thanks!
No prob!
except IE tester is only for Windows….That doesn’t make sense to me haha, it seems like the mac people need it more…
Meh, I always thought IE was below the elite Apple fans.
I kid
But seriously, that’s where virtualization can come in handy. And, from a developers standpoint, it probably wasn’t terribly difficult for them to build IETester on .NET for Windows. It’s primarily providing a sandboxed front-end to all of the past IE libraries.
That link should’ve been virtualization.
Nice, downloading now.
Great list man! Thanks for the suggestions. I will definetly use them this year! oh and yeah your compulsive..
Really good tools. I have used Browser Lab and IETester. Will check out Browse Shots..
=)
I use it occasionally – it’s definitely the best solution for seeing how the site is going to render for the minor browsers.
It’s also good for seeing how the site will appear in operating systems that may not have the same set of fonts as the one on which you’ve developed.
Nice list. We’re constantly fighting IE. Virtual Machines? Heck We’ve got actual machines still running IE6!
Sigh. I know. Isn’t it lame?