If you’re developing a website, you’re going to want to make sure it looks the same and works the same (or similar) in all web browsers. BrowserShots.org is a website that allows you to see how a website looks in many different browsers and browser versions.
Since I use my MacBook, I don’t have access to Internet Explorer. I rely on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari to check out my websites, but it’s important to know how the site looks in IE. Similarly many PC users can’t access Safari, and many don’t have more than a couple browsers.
A couple of days ago, someone emailed me to let me know about an issue with one of my websites, which he noticed in IE8. Fortunately, I was able to ask a couple of friends for screenshots and get home page screenshots in a variety of browsers using BrowserShots.org. I was quickly able to address the issue.
Browser Shots allows you to look at dozens of browsers and browser versions, and it’s a helpful tool to use. If you’re developing a website, you will want to use Browser Shots as you go.
BrowserShots is priceless. It enables you to see what your website looks like on all existing browsers running on the major operating systems.
Another thing I’ve used along these lines is a free Microsoft tool for testing several versions of IE. It presents a live rendering in whichever version and it has a Firebug like tool that allows you to diagnose what’s causing something to look wrong. http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565874.aspx
Another IE testing tool is IE Tester. http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
@ John
Thanks for posting that info… hadn’t heard of it before.
Browsershot lets you see how your site looks in other browsers but thats it. It isnt a very good tool for fixing issues in other browsers because they put you in a queue that can be a long wait. The other night I had to wait 45 minutes for one screenshot. I prefer something that I can actively go back and fourth to see if my changes fixed the issue in a browser.
Yup, BrowserShots is an amazing tool.
I’ve used them as well. They save me so much time in terms of seeing how the site will look in various browsers and various versions of browsers withouth having to install everything on my computer.
Great tool.
This is a nice resource. I remember hearing about it (maybe here) some time ago but had forgotten.
One item I’ll add is that the iPad Safari browser cannot display Flash widgets and functionality. This is a pretty big negative, and will wreck the display of many websites across the web that utilize Flash.
BrowserShots.org provides test coverage probably with all the possible browsers. And that’s all for free – if you are comfortable with waiting for some decent time until your queued tasks get processed.
If you want to make some quick shots in Internet Explorer only, you can use NetRenderer.com. It’s pretty quick and has even a difference option.
Browsershots is nice since its free, but for serious automation testing we use BrowserSeal http://browserseal.com
I’ve been using DebugBar’s IETester for a while, sometimes it doesn’t work though. What I do now is having some virtual machines with Windows and I test my websites on a real IE6 browser.
As for the others, in my Windows box I have the latest versions of all big browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera).
Best Regards,
Nuno Alex Oliveira
IE6 is dead, I dont know why people still support it. I understand there are still people using IE6 but Microsoft doesnt even support it any longer and its a horrible browser, it doesnt even support transparent images. IE itself is bad, but thats a different story. Having a true test environment is impossible unless you have a ton of computers with all different OS installed including Windows, Linux, Mac etc. Its a shame browsers all act differently even the same version on different OS. I have even see layout issues from IE 32Bit vs IE 64bit on the SAME machine!