With so many browsers fighting to gain superiority, developing websites has become a tough task for web designers. A developer has to keep a lot of things in mind while developing a website, one of the most important concern being cross-browser compatibility.
It is very important, as a developer for you to know, what the website you are developing will look like in different browsers, as each browser does not render the same effect for the underlying code, and there will be slight changes. The same can be said about different operating systems.
To make the life of a web developer easier, there are a few websites that provide with a facility to check how the designs will appear to customers and visitors when viewed on different browsers running on a combination of different Operating Systems.
Some of the best sites for Cross-browser testing are :
This is a new service rolled out from Adobe and is yet to be tested by the developer community. A lot more testing has to be done before saying anything about it.
With the Browser Labs, a developer can see what the pages / website looks like in real time, has the option to customize the test settings and the best part is integration of Dreamweaver CS4 , which lets the developer view different state of interactive pages, all in real time.
The current list of supported Browsers and OS are:
* Firefox 2.X and 3.X (Windows XP and Mac OS X)
* Internet Explorer 6.X and 7.X (Windows XP)
* Safari 3.X (Mac OS X)
2> BrowserShots : (My favorite 🙂 )
One of the best, and freely available service in the cross-browser testing industry with a wide range of browsers and operating systems to select from.
It takes a little while before all the screenshots are generated and you also have an option to download the screenshots on to your system. If you do not download the screenshots within 30 mins after running the query, they’ll be deleted automatically.
3> Cross Browser Testing :Â Another decent service, but has limitations while using the free service as they give complete access to paid customers. If none of the above two solutions work for you, then you should make use of the free service by Cross Browser Testing.
Each free session lasts 5 mins, and if you want to run longer sessions then you have an option to upgrade to be their paid customer, where in you’ll be given a lot of priority and the sessions will last however long you want them to.