Web Development Testing
“Get your design looking right with a standards-compliant browser first, then check it out in IE6 and other browsers to clean up the CSS or add hacks.” It’s a good piece of advice I read somewhere.
When designing, I always view my work in Safari first. I believe if I can get my design looking good in Safari then some of the other browsers, like Firefox, Mozilla, and Opera, are either very close to rendering correctly or look very much the same. It is nice when they all render the same way, but we can’t always be that lucky, can we?
What’s In The Bag?
The following is a list of browsers with which I test my work:
Apple Macintosh running OS X
- Safari
- Firefox
- Internet Explorer 5
- Opera
- Mozilla
Virtual PC (Windows 2000)
- Internet Explorer 6
- Internet Explorer 5.5
- Internet Explorer 5
- Netscape 7.2
- Netscape 6.2
- Firefox
- Opera
Leave No Browser Behind
I’m sure there are a few browsers I should be using that are not on my list. But then again, some browsers use the same rendering engine so they should render a given page similarly (Mozilla and Netscape use Gecko).
More Tools
In addition to using browsers, there are other tools, such as the Firefox extension, Web Developer Extension by Chris Pederick. It is great for easily switching off stylesheets, viewing a page under different screen sizes, and for making quick changes to a stylesheet directly. I think this extension alone is a huge addition to the arsenal.
Additional Reading
As for running multiple versions of Internet Explorer on your PC, now you can with these ‘hacked’ builds of IE.
Also of interest is an article from A List Apart about building a cross-platform testing station. The article is very out-of-date, but still worth a read.
