Testing Designs – Cross Platform

I’m a huge Apple guy, and I love Firefox 3.0 on the Mac.

But, due to the work I do, I find that I’m always having to fire up the PC in the office to test my CSS is working ok in IE. There’s even issues with Firefox on different platforms too (mainly due to font-rendering).

So, wouldn’t it be nice if there was somewhere you could just type in your URL and see screenshots of a load of different browsers?

Well, you’re in luck! Browsershots is a free service which lets you do just that.

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

There’s also a paid ‘priority service‘ for those who want their screenshots immediately.

It’s a nice service for quickly checking there’s no obvious errors with your layouts, but for in-depth testing, unfortunately there’s no real substitute for using the browser itself. Let’s just hope to God that Microsoft on day makes a decent standards-compliant browser!