If you’re a web designer, website owner, or blogger, you’ve probably spent at least some time checking to make sure your website loads fine in different browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, right?
Previously, I wrote about how you could download and install multiple versions of IE on the same computer for testing purposes. Not a bad idea, but not great if you only want to check once in a while.
A better option is to use an online tool, such as BrowserShots, a free service that creates screenshots of your website running on many different browsers and operating systems.
Adobe BrowserLab is a new online service that is very similar to BrowserShots. It gives webmasters a powerful tool to see exact renderings of their website in multiple browsers and operating systems. Right now it’s free, but eventually it will be released as a paid subscription service.
Adobe BrowserLab is a little bit different in that you can do cross-browser compatibility testing side-by-side. You can simultaneously view your website in Firefox and IE. Not only that, you can overlay two views and change the transparency, making it super easy to see what is different between two browser renderings.
Here are the browsers and operating systems that the tool currently supports in beta, but expect a lot more to be added later on:
Currently, the service does not work on Google Chrome, Opera, and a couple of other browsers, but hopefully that will change later also.
One other nice feature of BrowserLab is that it integrates with Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. This is great because you can then test local websites and content on multiple browsers and operating systems from within Dreamweaver.
Overall, it’s a fairly good service and worth paying for as long as the price is reasonable. If you use Dreamweaver, this might be the perfect tool to check your websites on many browsers. Enjoy! [via Digital Inspiration]
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