Stress-Free Browser Compatibility Testing

Reading time: Approximately 2 minutes

With all the differences between browsers these days it’s hard to keep up with what works in one and what doesn’t work in the other.

Often you’ll be developing changes to a website layout in your favourite browser and never realise how messed up it looks in another browser. The last thing you want is customers telling you that your layout is messed up.

The problem here is that some browsers (*cough* Internet Explorer *cough*) aren’t standards compliant. Unfortunately IE still holds a large segment of the browser marketshare so it cannot be ignored. Other browsers can also be more sensitive to certain non-compliant code.

It’s always a good idea to check your website is strict standards compliant. This is something that I haven’t done for Code My Own Road (though it IS something I always do it for client sites) due to time restrictions – I’m now making time to fix this up as it’s not only important for consistent display, but is viewed favourably by search engines.

• For CSS validation try W3C’s CSS Validation Service.
• For XHTML validation try W3C’s Markup Validation Service.

These two tools are very cool and let you re-valuate your website as many times are you like which will help you chase down those persistent errors.

The other cool tool I wanted to show you is something that’s been in my web design swiss army kit for a little while. It’s a browser compatibility tool that provides you with screen shots of potentially hundreds of browsers in many different configurations and versions. Want to see what your site looks like on Opera 10 under Linux? No problem. You don’t need a linux machine or Opera.

This browser compatibility checking service is provided by Browsershots.org and is an absolute godsend. Simply input the address you want to test and it will provide screenshots in each of the selected browsers.

So, now you’ve got the tools – go forth: Validate, Fix, and Check browser compatibility.

Your customers will thank you.

PS. I’m not affiliated with these guys in any way. Just so you know, yes, this is a genuine recommendation