If you are a professional website designer, you will know the importance of achieving cross browser compatibility for your website designs. Even for people with years of experience in CSS and designing, 100% cross browser compatibility is a pain to achieve. Gone are the days when putting a label “Best viewed with Netscape” or “Best viewed with Internet Explorer” guaranteed you compatibility.
Now a days, there are dozens of browsers on hundreds of devices that need to render your website without damaging your design. It’s not possible for you to own all these devices and test your design on them one by one. There are so many issues to test like:
- Screen Resolution
- Colour Limitations
- CSS rendering & hacks
- Frames support
- PNG transparency
- Javascript performance
So for this problem, there are 2 great tools that will help you test your site designs in dozens of browsers and platforms.
BrowserShots
BrowserShots is a great free tool which captures screenshots of your website. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server.
Step 1 - Select all the browsers you want a screenshot of.
Step 2 - Select other details like screen size, color depth, javascript, etc.
Step 3 - Wait for your screenshots. Depending on the queue, the results start appearing almost immediately.
Type: Free
Website: http://browsershots.org/
BrowserCam
BrowserCam takes compatibility testing one step ahead of BrowserShots. BrowserCam lets you see your web design on any browser on any operating system. With real-time remote access, you can check javascripts, DHTML, forms and other dynamic functionality on any platform. They have a bank of testing machines with different platforms that you can use to test your website.
They offer a variety of services:
- Browser Capture
BrowserCam’s Screen Capture Service lets you submit single or multiple URL’s, choose the browsers and operating systems you want to see, and screen captures of your webpage are loaded in the different browsers and operating systems you selected. - Device Capture
With DeviceCam, you can see how your website will look on PDAs – Blackberry & Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0. Whether a PDA’s screen is in portrait format or landscape format, DeviceCam will help you to fine tune your website for your users who are always on the move. - Remote Access
Remote Access Service lets you log into any of their machines remotely using a simple program called VNC. Simply select the operating system you want and click connect. They will allocate a dedicated machine from their server farm for your immediate use. Macintoshes, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP machines, and Linux machines are available in a variety of configurations. - BC-Virtual
Virtual Machine service functions in a similar manner to the remote access service, but with added versatility and power. Virtual Machine gives you your own personal drive space, which you can use to load a wide variety of operating system images, so you can create your own personal virtual machines. This is the most customizable plan.
Type: Commerical / Free Trial
Website: http://www.browsercam.com/
