View your website in any browser March 22, 2007
Posted by Joe in : Technobabble , trackback
While I’ve been designing the website for Connections Made Easy, I’ve been particular about making sure most browsers render the site correctly. In fact, most do, minus one glaring submission: Internet Explorer 6.
I only know this from viewing the site on a friend’s computer. I don’t have IE6 anymore (upgraded to IE7) and I don’t plan on using virtual machines or going through the arduous task of installing IE6 next to IE7 (no thanks). It seems IE6 decided to move my pages to the left instead of keeping them center, and it also smudged my menu items closer together. All in all, its not so bad, but since most of the PC services market is probably still using IE6, I’m going to have to go out of my way to make it perfect.
In this situation, I found Browsershots to be extremely useful. As a free, web-based service, you just type in the URL of your site (either your domain or include the page for specific pages) and select which browsers and settings to use. You can select virtually ANY browser across Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms. You can also pick and choose color depth, resolution, and more. In the end, you’re placed in a queue and after 15-60 minutes you’ll be able to refresh the page and see screenshots from the various browsers of your page. The service is a little quirky (sometimes you don’t get all the screenshots) and can be very slow (your site might expire before you even get the screenshots, so be sure to increase the Wait Time).
All in all, Browsershots is a great service, especially since its free. But if you’re like me and you need the shots back on the spot, try url2image. I haven’t actually tried it yet but I’d imagine it is fast since you’re paying for it. Its pretty cheap - you can get 2 screenshots for $1 or 100 for $20. I can’t imagine using more than 100 and for $20, it saves a heck of a lot of time. I’ll try it out and update this post when I do.
Now you have no excuse to ignore cross-browser compatibility ever again!
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