Methods to check the look of a web page on different browsers

Question

I would like to be able to see how a web page looks on different browsers before releasing it. I have several on my machine, but I cannot check different versions of IE, and other browsers, and I cannot check other OSs. I know of http://browsershots.org/ but this takes ~30 minutes at times, thus it can be problematic for troubleshooting.

Answer 1

For your internet exploder problem, perhaps MultipleIE's will be of use?

For the OS problem, Virtual Machines are your friend :)

Answer 2

I would suggest using Virtual Machines of one sort or another. The discussion here would probably be helpful for you.

Answer 3

To test different version of IE, I use IETester.

BrowserShots is also good, but as you said, it's slow.

Answer 4

Virtual machines are the classic solution to this problem. However, if 30 minutes to run through a full suite of browser tests is too long for you, I'm not sure that anything can help!

Just to clarify: Browsershots lets you test a lot of different browsers and browser versions. I think it quite reasonable to test them all in 30 minutes. However, if you have a target browser that does test poorly, you'll obviously want a locally installed version (thus the role of Virtual Machines) for the testing/change/retesting cycle. That is what I was after when commenting about the 30 minutes!

Answer 5

Consider the Selenium product, which can run an automated test suite through a variety of browsers, and do it all local (or with virtual machines).

Answer 6

@eulerfx, you are not telling us which OS you work on. Like other posters I achieve what you want with a mix of using virtual machines (VM) and IEtester.

Since I develop on a Mac (I'm a switcher after 20 years on Windows and very happy having done so) I test the sites in Firefox 3 and Safari 3 on my OS X machine, on a Windows XP VM I test Firefox 2, IE6, 7, and 8 using IETester plus whichever other browser i want such as Opera and Chrome. I also have a second VM running Ubuntu for those rare cases my web sites need that type of compatibility as well.

My work flow is to first build the site for FF3. Once I'm happy with the task and the look I check all browsers in the order given above. If you have a specific problem in IE6 for example, you can then get immediate feedback for your changes made to the IE6 stylesheet using conditional comments.

I use Parallels to create VM's on OS X. There is a version of Parallels running on Windows but many other vendors have similar offerings.

Answer 7

BrowserPool makes it possible to test different browsers on different Mac, Windows and Linux systems via a VNC-client.

Answer 8

I have a question verses an answer :) I am the owner of a website, not the designer/programmer, so some of the issues we are experiencing is rather daunting to me. The website looks a mile long in some browsers, wide in others, and some times members say the graphic runs over the text. The website was designed by Genesis Web Studio, in Ohio using PHP (hard coded), is basically all the information I have on how it was set up. We have since hired a new design firm: Thank God! But, the problems are still there and I really could use some advice on why this sort of thing happens and if it can be fixed. Thank you for any advice. The url is: http://www.onestopwriteshop.com -- Thank you again, -- Katina