23
Mar
2010
Test Your Website On Different Browsers – Multiple Platform Browser Testing
It’s important for a web developer to keep in mind the compatibility issue of a website on different browsers and platforms. For instance, you design and develop a website using Mozilla Firefox on Windows Vista. It displays perfectly fine and the scripts work as desired. And then you found a Macbook on the street and decided to take it home. You switched it on and launched Safari to view your website. Alas, why is the top banner aligned to the left, not centered? Why are your DIVs in a mess? Why is there a Javascript error on the user login page? Welcome to the world of Cross Platform Browser Testing.
So you badly want to see how your newly created website displays on other browsers and platforms?
Check out BrowserShots.
They’ve got a whole load of different browsers and on top of that, 4 different Operating Systems for you to test on (Linux, Mac OS, Windows and BSD). One good thing is that they include all versions of a browser – if you want to test your site on Microsoft Internet Explorer, they’ve got all the way from IE4 to IE8 for you to do your compatibility testing. Some of the not-so-well-known browsers included in BrowserShots are Dillo, Epiphany, Konquerer, Minefield, SeaMonkey and Shiretoko. Another great feature they have is that you can specify which JavaScript, Java and Flash version you want for your testing and also choose a certain screen size and color depth. And the best thing, BrowserShots is free.
1. Go to www.browsershots.org
2. Enter your website URL in the textfield “Enter URL here”, e.g. http://www.google.com
3. Check the browsers you’d like to test your website on. By default, they’ve checked a lot, so I always click “Select: None” below and do my own re-selection.
4. There are 5 drop-down menus below which are additional parameters you can choose if you want to be more specific in your testing.
5. Click “Submit” and you’ll go to a page where all your browsers and their respective Queue Estimates (how long you have to wait for BrowserShots to process the screenshot of your website on that browser) will be displayed.
6. As the note states at that page, your screenshots will appear here when they are uploaded. Reload this page or bookmark it and come back later. It may take quite a long time depending on the amount of browsers you’re testing on.
7. Once the screenshot thumbnail appears, click on it to view the enlarged image.
Here’s a list of other websites which provide cross platform browser testing tools:
1. BrowserCam – http://www.browsercam.com
2. Litmus – http://litmusapp.com
3. CrossBrowserTesting – http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com
4. BrowsrCamp – http://www.browsrcamp.com
5. Net Renderer – http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer
6. Multi Safari – http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari
So that’s it, you’ve just learnt a great and easy way to test a website on multiple browsers and operating systems!
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