OK, so you're an avid [Firefox or Internet Explorer or Opera or Safari] browser fan. You checked your web pages and they look fine. In your browser. That's not enough.
You need to know if your web pages look good and don't "break" in other popular browsers. Some services are free, some are paid. Check browsers such as:
- Firefox 2.0
- Internet Explorer 6
- Internet Explorer 7
- Opera (varied versions)
- Safari (a couple of versions). iPhones use Safari, by the way.
Not only that, you need to check different operating systems, because some browser versions can and do differ on different OSs. Consider:
- Mac OSX
- Linux (which has a lot of flavors
- Windows
You can pay one-time or monthly fees to use a commercial service that checks a web page against varied browsers or you can go the free route.
Browsershots is a free online service I like. It uses computers of volunteers around the world to make snapshots of a web page in browser versions you select. After a wait (you can hang on or just return to that web page), you get a collection of thumbnail images. Click on one and get a larger view.
It's very easy to see if everything looks OK or if there's a problem with that browser displaying your web page as you intended. The image below represents about 35 minutes worth of waiting -- a price of the price.
As you can see from the image, one snapshot appears at only half-screen vertically. That's because the volunteer forgot to maximize the browser. When you run into that, this service even has an instant "problem" report for each browser snapshot.
