Testing your web designs on different browsers

[Morlan]

I'm currently devoping a website on a PC. I'm testing with FF and IE6 but my clients use a MAC and Saffari which I can't get for the PC. My client also uses FF but tables are still not lined up properly so it must be a PC/MAC thing

It's in a pain in the bum because he has to keep sending me screengrabs of what he sees on the MAC.

Other than buying a MAC, is there any way to make sure that this doesn't happen? I'm pulling my hair out!

Tnx

 

[Al Vallario]

If you can put the site online, you could use a service such as the excellent browsershots.org. It's not ideal for the old "make a small change, reload, another small change, reload" kind of development, but if you've got a live site and a client moaning it doesn't work in Safari it's easier to shove the URL in and wait for a screenshot than guiding them through the intricicies of taking screenshots, saving images and sending them to you.

If you're looking for a local, software-based solution, I have no idea.

 

[Morlan]

If you can put the site online, you could use a service such as the excellent browsershots.org. It's not ideal for the old "make a small change, reload, another small change, reload" kind of development, but if you've got a live site and a client moaning it doesn't work in Safari it's easier to shove the URL in and wait for a screenshot than guiding them through the intricicies of taking screenshots, saving images and sending them to you.

If you're looking for a local, software-based solution, I have no idea.

OMG. This perfect. Now I can see what the client sees in Saffari.

Nice one!

 

[z3b3dy]

I'm currently devoping a website on a PC. I'm testing with FF and IE6 but my clients use a MAC and Saffari which I can't get for the PC. My client also uses FF but tables are still not lined up properly so it must be a PC/MAC thing

It's in a pain in the bum because he has to keep sending me screengrabs of what he sees on the MAC.

Other than buying a MAC, is there any way to make sure that this doesn't happen? I'm pulling my hair out!

Tnx

There should be no difference between Firefox on a Mac and Firefox on a PC. Also if you code well and it looks fine in Firefox then you can be pretty sure it looks OK in Safari. Although they use different rendering engines they are both good on standards compliance.

Another option for cross-platform testing that has been mentioned already today is BrowserCam.

 

[Al Vallario]

There should be no difference between Firefox on a Mac and Firefox on a PC. Also if you code well and it looks fine in Firefox then you can be pretty sure it looks OK in Safari. Although they use different rendering engines they are both good on standards compliance.

Different browsers on different platforms are bound to have their quirks. Although standards compliance is certainly getting better, it's no where near perfection - and this is confounded by the fact that fonts and forms are rendered very differently in Windows and OS X.

Another option for cross-platform testing that has been mentioned already today is BrowserCam.

BrowserCam is good, but browsershots.org does the same job (argueably better than BrowserCam) and doesn't require registration - it's totally free

 

[z3b3dy]

Different browsers on different platforms are bound to have their quirks. Although standards compliance is certainly getting better, it's no where near perfection - and this is confounded by the fact that fonts and forms are rendered very differently in Windows and OS X.


BrowserCam is good, but browsershots.org does the same job (argueably better than BrowserCam) and doesn't require registration - it's totally free

Apart from font rendering I find no differences between Firefox on a Mac and a PC. With Safari yes there is a difference as to how form elements are rendered but that shouldn't affect any other structure on a site. 99.9% of the time I develop a site in Firefox it works absolutely fine in Safari.