Checking Your Website in Other Browsers

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As a web designer I’ve long struggled with having to test websites in a variety of different browsers.   Technology is a rapidly changing field, and the ways to go about doing things is rapidly evolving as well.   Just a couple of years ago, I bought a Mac so I could test websites.   I had to keep my PC computers though so that I could test the websites on Internet Explorer.   You could only have one installation of Internet Explorer and so I essentially needed two PC computers to test for Internet Explorer 6 and 7.   What a headache it was!   Internet Explorer 6 was long a headache for me, but I no longer support it (nor does Google) so that headache is gone.   I got around that problem on my Mac with Paralells, a Virtual Machine software that allowed you to have multiple operating systems on one machine.   That was great, but each Virtual Machine (or operating system installation) took 10 GB of space.   I could go on and on with my troubles and how I have solved them with various solutions, but only other designers would be able to relate to this painstaking proceedure.

Enter the Future!

Here are two online tools that will allow you to test your website on various internet browsers.   Yes, you can have Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7 and 8 all in one place!

Adobe Labs
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/browserlab/

Spoon.net
http://spoon.net/browsers/

Making the Fixes

Internet Explorer: I find using Internet Explorer 8’s Developer Tools to be useful in trouble shooting IE errors (found by pressing F12).

All Other Browsers: Get yourself two firefox plug-ins to make your life a whole lot easier.   The first is Firebug, and the second is Web Developer.   If your site works in Firefox, it will work fine in most other browsers.

Notice a trend here?   All other browsers vs. Internet Explorer.   Yes, it’s been that way for some time now.   IE is a thorn in most web developers sides.

Validate Your Code

Another great starting place for figuring out how to check for errors is by validating your HTML code.   The W3C has a great online validation tool (http://validator.w3.org/)

Hope this helps! Happy troubleshooting!