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Browsershots – Test your web design for different browsers
September 1st, 2008First of all, I know it’s a shame, I last posted 4 days ago. That being said, I want to let you know about a tool I use a lot when designing websites. That little tool is called browsershot and what it does is taking screenshots of your website in a lot of different browsers. You know how hard it can be to test your design on IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, firefox 3, opera, konqueror, etc. This will make your life so much easier and you won’t have to run 30 different browsers on 3 different machines or call your friends to ask them how your website looks on their machine!
How it works
First, head to Browsershots website obviously.
Then, it’s pretty straight forward, you enter the URL you want to test and the OS/Browsers you’d like to test with.
Then, you just have to wait for the system to take the screenshots. The time to take them can vary, but it’s usually pretty fast. I selected a dozen of browsers for seohorror.com and the estimated time was between 3 and 12 minutes.
Refresh, see the results and back to work
You should get something like this in the end:
You can click on the screenshots to see real life size images and it is a great way to identify problems with other browsers.
Perfection isn’t possible
You will usually notice some glitch with some browsers, but don’t try to be compatible with all of them. I usually concentrate on being compatible with IE 6.0 & 7.0, Firefox 2.0 & 3.0, and Safari 2.0 & 3.0. These are the main browsers and it’s important to be compatible with all of them. You could also analyse your traffic and see what browser most of your users use, this might help you identify important browsers to be compatible with.
19 Responses to “Browsershots – Test your web design for different browsers”
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whew. i worked as a software quality assurance before and i never encounter this program. i wish i knew this earlier. this is really great . i will try this one. thanks a lot. I really mean it.
jigss last blog post..kontest
lovely! now i can see what others are looking at. you are right that there is no point trying to suit every browsers out there. i am doing it for FF and IE only…
Good service (and free unlike plenty of similar ones).
Only downside I experienced that some of screenshots may be outdated if you used it several times.
Rarsts last blog post..Easy hash tricks
This is pretty cool – I have recently been working on a site where on Firefox everything was great – some months later I found out that all IE users could not click any links –
This was a valuable lesson to me that the way things look and act in one browser may not be the same in all browsers.
This is a great tool to help with this.
What I would really like to find is a tool that checks how your site looks to different countries – I found out by pure luck that my site gave an error to all German users – I would never know as I am not in Germany and know no one in Germany.
Also would be handy if you intend to Geotarget ads.
Do you know of any such tool?
Thanks for sharing. I wasn’t aware of it but will definitely check it out.
Caroles last blog post..Butterfly and Hummingbird Visions
@jigs: No problems jigs! For quality assurance this is certainly a great tool, especially for businesses because it is extremely important that all customers experience your website the same way!
@shaxx: Yeah FF and IE is fine, it’s 95% of my traffic, so there’s no point banging your head against the wall to make your website 100% compatible with other browsers. I just wish people would stop using IE6, it’s still used too much!
next comments soon, my computer will reboot automatically!
great post thanks for sharing
SEO forumss last blog post..List of do-follow blogs to boost your Google Pagerank.
Thats awesome , Google just launched its own browser today
WebTrafficROIs last blog post..The Right Time is Now
I wish I would have found this earlier. It would and will make presenting different views to clients. It should help quell some gripes and cure misconceptions.
Make sure you take a sedative before you look, IE is f’d up that you may be shocked at how your websites look!
JRs last blog post..Website Tips – Protecting your Websites Legally
@Rarst: That’s quite possible, I didn’t notice it!
@Olly: That would be awesome and unfortunately I don’t know of any tool like that. I never searched for that…
I never really thought of actually checking what my website would look to non-us/UK/CAN visitors and there’s now a doubt in my mind!
@WebTrafficROI: Yeah, I tested the browser and it’s lightning fast. I will probably post a little something soon about it.
@Lance: Yep, definitely!
@JR: Yeah, IE is a total pain. Most of the time I spend on design is because of IE not following web standards.
With the new Google browser just being released will we have to add this one to the browser testing?
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Great tool, but the most incompatibility problems I have are with js and ajax. And screenshots just don’t help at all. Does anyone have some tool or plugin for firefox that would help?
This is really good, hope the support for Google’s chrome comes soon, should be easy to add as it’s based on safari base code.
Would be great if it gave tips on fixing the incompatabilty errors too…
grat tool, i will tryout, cause i think that will make me work much easier than before
I’ve been using browsershots for a while… great tool… two thumbs up!
wow dude! This is a nice little tool! I never seen it before but I understand how beneficial it can be! good stuff man.
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This program is the reason I ended up installing firefox. I didn’t believe the outcome.
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Hi. Do you do logo design?