I'm nearing the publication of my site, and I'm wondering what everyone else uses to check their sites cross-browser (Opera, Firefox, Chrome, IE (7, 8, 9))? Is there some sort of all-in-one program, or do you just install all those browsers?
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closed as not constructive by MichaelT, Martijn Pieters, Robert Harvey, gnat, Kilian Foth Apr 9 at 8:03
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.
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IE 6, 8, 9, Firefox 3, 4 and Chrome. Edit: I have the browsers running in VMs, keeps them out the way, just boot them up when I need them, Parallels on the Mac and XP mode on Windows. |
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There are many services out there that will help you out with cross-browser testing. If you just want to see what things look like in different browsers without spending any money, you can give Browser Shots a try. For interactive testing, there are services like Cross-Browser Testing. While searching for answers to this, I came across this article that reviews several different services and compares them based on price and features. |
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You might also want to try Adobe BrowserLab. I've also used a program called MultipleIEs. It allowed me to install multiple versions of IE on my Win XP machine. That was a while ago, but it worked well. And I agree with Anna that Browser Shots is a nice free solution. |
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Adobe made a very good service too, |
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As noted, you really can't do much save install browsers and test site using them. Stuff like browsershots and all was a godsend 5 years ago when you were just dealing with visual bugs, but these days nearly any application -- and your major testing surface -- is interactivity not design. Now, all that said, you can automate some of this, at least on select platforms -- check out slenium and selenium RC; that will let you create an automated test suite for firefox. Now, does that cover all fronts? No. But having an automated testing shot at all is better than most. And you can at least confine your painful, manual browser testing to a working application. Insofar as which browsers to test, I would spend more time on mobile safarai and other webkit than on desktop IE at this point. |
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I have them all installed: IE 8 (Natively) IE Tester (8,7,6) Chrome Firefox Opera Safari |
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That depends on your audience. Is your site targeting any group in particular? (Corporate, older, younger, mobile, touch-screen ...) Corporate browser choices can be several years behind the times, depending on the size of the company and the speed at which change occurs ... inexperienced users may have only the browser(s) initially installed on their computers, even if that means IE 6 or Netscape Navigator or whatever. For a casual site, it may be enough simply to install the most recent version of a few browsers and leave it at that; you can probably do that directly on your development machine. Beyond that, you're probably going to have to use tools of one sort or another, but remember that there are always catches to simulators. (Of course, the flip side to that is that those catches may only apply to 0.1% or 0.001% or 0.00001% of your target audience, so maybe it doesn't matter that Service X doesn't emulate IE 6 on Windows XP perfectly.) Mobile and touch-screen devices may require simulators anyway unless you plan on buying a wide variety of devices (or getting your company to buy them). In some cases, you may simply have to post a disclaimer saying that the site is best experienced in (browser list goes here) ... |
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I use:
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Multiple VMs with native browsers, running automatic testing via Selenium RC. |
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We used selenium , and wrote code that will take a screenshot of every page and pastes it in a document . |
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If you don't want to install all browsers (or use virtual machines) maybe BrowseEmAll could be a solution for you? |
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