Effectively Testing Your Website in Multiple Browsers

Some good advice there… especially using analytics to check exactly who/what is being used to view your blog.

There is one further problem I find though, which is the question of screen resolution. I draw a webcomic for my blog and I find the line between catering for lower and higher resolution users quite a tricky one to tread.

I hate that you have to program to multiple browsers. Why can’t everyone just settle down with Firefox?

Adam,
Yes, in your case I think that is an important issue. I guess you have to find what’s best for most people while inconveniencing as few people as possible. You’re right, not easy.

Goyin,
I’m doing my part (using Firefox).

Glad I came across this list. I was on another site, where the blogger was suggesting that you check how your site looks in numerous browsers, but he did not give any suggestions. Just checked back at Workingathomeinternet.com, and he did respond to my question with two of the above sites.

Antonius,
I’m glad it can help!

I ran into a page one time that just could only be viewed in IE… I can’t imagine how much traffic and potential revenue that site is losing by not testing in multiple browsers.

A lot of those testing services seem pretty unnecessary, though- I feel like as long as you have your pages tested on the major browsers, you shouldn’t have too much of a hard time with the others.

More effective internet tools. I’ve been searching for this and all Google gives me is…cr*ap.

Sly from Slyvisions.com

Your method works great with desktop browsers, unfortunately Google Analytics does a lousy job of identifying mobile browsers (they do visit your site, check screen resolutions in Google Analytics you should see some there).

And as for testing in mobile browsers good luck, there are a lot of them and multiple versions of the same browser ie Nokia release a new S60 browser every year.

Mobil browsers, oh no, that seems to be another large can of worms. The company that can come up with the universal mobile browser will be very wealthy.
I understand that mobile technology is a rapidly growing marketing field to include search technology.

Nick,
You’re right, this doesn’t really address the issue of mobile browsers. Thanks for leaving your thoughts on the subject.

Adam,
It definitely is growing rapidly, so I guess it will have to be more of a priority in the not-too-distant future.

I am a non-professional non-designer who got drafted to create the lab website. Being arrogant, ignorant, and a masochist, I insisted on learning HTML/CSS and coding it myself. It went up on Friday. It looked beautiful in four browsers and on ten computers in various resolutions.

But on the boss’s mom’s computer? Broken, indeed non-functional, I found out yesterday. I guess there is a reason people go to school for this.

Thanks for the article. I may yet take this shotgun out of my mouth.

Methylviolet,
Thanks for reading! Sorry to hear about your problems with that 1 stubborn browser. I checked out your site and it looks good, especially if that’s your first crack at web design. Not too many 1st projects look that good. Have you found the problem with the 1 browser?

It is a verygood web!
I will email to my friends!

It is a verygood post!

I often forget to test my site in different browsers and then when I find out down the track that the site does not look good in ie I need to revamp it. I use firefox most of the time and forget about internet explorer lol.

sometimes visitors tests our sites at other browsers for us one of my site was not working on opera and some of my visitors send me feedback about it.

I’ve always found that a standards-based approach works wonders when developing a website. Having said that, some browsers really do not agree with standards (IE).

Once you’ve had a few years of practice when dealing with browsers like IE you learn what CSS parameters will cause what to break. Sadly for me it still happens a lot with IE and occasionally Opera, so I often test my websites at university, where I can test on most popular browsers. Working past that, BrowserCam works wonders for me as well.

As far as Mobile browsing goes I almost feel it’s starting to phase out, what with many handsets now pushing for 800×600 screen resolutions. Give it a couple of years (and a few more iPhone competitors) and horrid things like WML and mobile optimisation will be a thing of the past.

Eeek! I just found out that 30% of my viewers are using IE6 or older!!

Thanks for the tips. Now to update…

Thanks for this post! its very important for us, have resources like this.

Thanks Again.

Santiago

Its too bad people can’t just use Firefox…

Really great post for all web coders, now It’s become baisic needs for all outsourcing clients, they want to test site in several browsers/OSx.
I am checking my projects in around 4 browsers and on 3 different OXs for Pure DIV Layouts.

Adjustment of the design under different browsers is always a problem, unless us not proficient css. In the post thanks to going to work.

Great post. Thanks!

BrowserShots is the best even if they’re consuming a lot of resources to have answers like Win2000 + Opera or freeBSD + Firefox. From my point of view there are only few big combinations, maximum 15 and that’s it. A free service with only few combinations it will be the best because will cover 99% visitor’s systems and will not be such a big resources consumer.

Nice post. Thanks!

I was really pleased with this advice, it allowed me to double check and tweak my site at http://www.plunderhere.com which is a very busy online auction to make sure all main browsers functioned properly, thanks very much!

“I hate that you have to program to multiple browsers. Why can’t everyone just settle down with Firefox?”

…because it’s not the best browser out there, because it’s ugly and clunky and slow perhaps?

Thanks for this list. These will come in handy

Very useful article for those who are professionally involved in coding websites. Thank you!

The best way to test in multiple browser is to download the browser. I use Firefox as my main browser, but I have downloaded IE, Chrome and Safari all for coding purposes.

test the website look on various mobile browsers,is their any tool?

You just made my day. I was looking for a service of this kind for so long, and when I finally found one a few months ago (browsercam) it was just too expensive. But now with browsershots.org I can test my designs as I need. Thanks!

““I hate that you have to program to multiple browsers. Why can’t everyone just settle down with Firefox?””

Because I don’t like to wait for the entire program to start responding again when it’s loading tabs, I like to use my RAM for things other than Firefox, I don’t like having to load up GTK just to check my email, I’m not really a fan of browsers that miserably fail the Acid3 test, and I’d like my 3 hour netbook battery to last longer than 30 minutes.

I do, however, really like Opera.

i take your advice.. and thanks for all tools very helpful

Really nice internet tools there. Thanks.

BrowserSeal is a new fast multi browser screenshot application that supports Firefox, IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome, Safari and Opera and allows to test web sites located on a hard drive or corporate intranet. Prices are extremely competitive.

if all browsers followed the same standard that would be great, A wise man once said to me “Browsers are ever forgiving.” I usually create a site without css then go from there that way there’ll hardly be any trouble with x-browser issues, having said that its hard to stay away from using css to style it most recent browsers conform to standards except the “ONE” not referring to any names. But I have a version of ie tester by debug bar that lets you test from ie 5.5 to 8 all in one application thats a great tool, plus i use browsershots another great site.

I wish that all browsers would display the same, it would make designing so much easier. Until then I enjoy the challenge. Thanks for the resources.

Thanks for this list. These will come in handy

Good advise. I always just went with the most popular but, using Google Analytics is the best way since you will know your users preferences.

thanks

indeed nowadays is MANDATORY to test your web pages in many different browsers. I happened to have an issue with one of my clients’ pages in Safari , which i was not aware of it at the beginning, that impacted many sales. Always test new pages in different browsers.

the testing in mainly IE and Firefox should be done before even launching the site. these are the 2 main internet browsers that people use nowadays, so therefore displaying bad results may affect in a bad way your online business

I hooked up another computer the other day. Running XP, firefox – went to my website – it was blue. Font looked awful, width, height sizes were crazy….I felt kind of sick to my stomach. I had know idea.

The only real difference is the monitor and the monitor/machine screen resolution.

For back ground color I had to make sure the css used “bgcolor: #FFFFFF; – using ‘background-color’ or ‘background’ came out blue (ish) leaving image backgrounds white so the whole page looked awful.

Fonts: I like goergia for content but I’m considering generic arial or verdana – just because of the rendering differences.

Thanks for the advice. I was advertising my site with adwords and didn’t realize that it wasn’t displaying properly on various browsers specifically Explorer 6.0. This is a problem as when I checked Google analytics about 6% of visitors were form those who used this version of Explorer.

thanks for these as well, I had a cross browser problem today and thanks to Browsershot I was able to fix it. Now if only IE would get it’s act together.

Just testing out my site in BrowserShots again.

So many browser options to choose from.
Only chose 4.
Took 20 minutes to upload 2 browser shots, 23 minutes for all 4.
Free but very slow again.

One of our customers told us our website wasn’t looking too well and after a little digging, I Googled your blog (Thanks for the helpful links!). Found it was not working on Chrome. Got me interested and went to Google Analytics and saw the % usage of each browser…I would never have thought that.

Also, found usage of mobile devices, especially the Iphone is growing fast. Going to keep an eye on this now. Thank you for the helpful website!

Really helpful article, I hosted my site in blogger with a custom domain but with my friend’s computer IP address, i can’t get into my site. but with proof IP i would able to see my site, i though the problem with browser (I checked with Google Analytics) but almost all browser visitors came to my site. I don’t know what is the problem. Is the problem with my Server or Browser?

Hello Everybuddy,
I m new in web development. Currently I m developing a web application in ASP.NET 08 with C#. Problem is that, when i test my page in browsers like IE, Opera, firefox it shows diferently, The Panels, Tables that i hv used all r misplaced in several browsers. Suppose in Opera its same as I designed, but in IE some objects lost its TOP,LEFT etc.

Please help me.

RMM
Bangladesh

I use a website program called MRSITE to create my website. With NO programming knowledge what so ever I am extremely confused. I have however learned quite a lot from viewing the source of every website and trying to see how it relates to the website we all see in front of us. MRSITE does not however allow the basic page structure to be changed via HTML. There are many things I can do but the css part is all fixed. I therefore have to upload a background image and hope it fits via trial and error. I also have to test on different screen resolutions. A I correct in saying make it look best at the most common resolution used and put up with the fact it will look poor on other resolutions. Great article none the less.

Really great advice. I will definitly implement it.

Is Keynote Net Mechanic still available?

Andy