Check Your Websites Appearance in Other Browsers with Browsershots
One of the most frustrating aspects of web design is trying to make your website look good in every browser. If you use some advanced css techniques, you never know how an older browser or a different platform is going to handle it.
You can test how your site displays in a few browsers - for example, I often check mine out in Windows IE, Ubuntu Firefox, and Ubuntu Opera. But how am I going to check it on Mac browsers like Safari?
Enter Browsershots.
The premise is very simple. You check off a list of browsers and platforms, enter your website’s url, and click submit. Then the servers open your site, take a screenshot, and upload the display to Browsershots.
You can then view the screenshots and see how your website appeared in those browsers. You can check out some sample displays for an education related website that I created.
Your options are pretty extensive. At the moment you can choose from 36 Linux browsers, 12 Windows browsers, and 4 Mac OS browsers.
After you submit your request, you need to wait until your website comes up in the queue. Each server (factory, as they call it at Browsershots) has its own queue. A lot of the servers will be done in a couple of minutes, but some queues can be one to two hours long.
One of the downsides to the site is that your request will expire in 30 minutes. The completed screenshots will stay up there, but if you have any requests left in the queue they will be canceled.
You can refresh your request by clicking a button, but if you get stuck in a 90 minute queue you’ll have to remember to refresh your request several times.
All in all, very useful tool. I plan to use it to test out any future design projects. So the next time you want to see how a foreign browser would display your site, head over to Browsershots.
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