From the inception of web browsers, it has come to a stage, where it is rich with functionalities and more or less immune to malware attacks. Nowadays, it is very difficult to live a day without this indispensable software. Quite a good number of web browsers exist in the market. While Google’s chrome is leading, the other browsers do have their respective market share. When you launch your website, whether it is for personal use or business, the ultimate aim is always the maximum visibility. Since, we don’t know the web browser that our users are depending on, it is always important to check browser compatibility for the major web browsers.
If you would like to perform cross browser compatibility check, there are quite a few solutions.
Check Browser Compatibility by Testers
The most primitive and manual option is to identify tester, who can perform cross browser testing. The testers can certify your website in different browsers and then can send you the test proofs. Though, this process of browser compatibility check is very straight forward, it doesn’t have enough flexibility. The difficult part here is to find out the testers, who have reach to different web browsers combined with different operating systems.
Screenshots from different browsers
You can check browser compatibility through screen shots. There are number of websites, which give this facility of cross browsing testing. If you provide the page url, it provides screen shots in different web browsers, based on your preference. In this category, browsershots (browsershots.org) is the most popular one. Browsershots is a paid service. However you can avail this service free for 14 minutes. Adobe browserLab (browserlab.adobe.com) is another name in this area. Here, you can compare pages in two web browsers, side by side or overlaid one upon another. Browsera(browsera.com) is one more name in this category. Testing multiple pages is easy with Browsera as it can automatically crawls pages with in a site.
Version Compatibility For Specific Browser
There are few more websites, which provide the facility of browser compatibility test across versions for different web browsers. For example, Netrenderer (netrenderer.com) provides facility to check compatibility across various versions of Internet Explorer. At the time of writing this article, Netrenderer provides screen shots for Internet Explorer 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 and 5.5. This service is free. There are also browser compatibility tools, e.g. IETester, which provides similar kind of functionality.
Where you can download IE Tester? - http://www.my-debugbar.com/ietester/install-ietester-v0.4.12.exe
Test browser compatibility throug Sandbox
Sandbox is another browser compatibility tool. Spoon.net’s sand box lets you run any web browser from the web in an isolated environment eliminating the need for installation of multiple browsers. However, as it is running in your machine, the variation of OS cannot be achieved here. Currently spoon.net provides different browsers namely Chrome, Firefox, Firefox Mobile, Opera, Opera Mobile, Safari and Internet Explorer.
Online Browser Compatibility Testing
Last, in the category of the browser compatibility check, is the online testing of your website. Here, you can open your website through cloud based access or through virtual machine in different combination of browser and operating system. Browserstack.com is currently providing this facility through cloud based access. We will slightly elaborate on this particular service.
Browserstack provides browser compatibility tool, which is free for 20 minutes. If you want extended testing period, you need to purchase their plan. However, as browserstack is providing multiple features, I believe that this is worth purchasing their plan. Through browserstack, you can achieve the result of Virtual Desktop but eliminating the necessity of frequently changing your virtual desktop (in order to have different browsers/OS combination). It has also the feature of automated java script testing.
For cross browser testing of your website in a particular web browsers and OS combination, first of all, you need to select the web browser and the OS. Available browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Available operating systems are Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Xp, Apple OS X Snow leopard, Apple OS X Lion, Apple OS X Mountain Lion. The good news for you is that you can choose Mobile and Tablet emulators as well. This feature is really good as more and more websites are now becoming Mobile phone compatible. The available mobile OS are iOS, Android and Opera mobile. Once you set up your desired combination, enter the page url. It will open up the page remotely. This online browser compatiblity test is far better than screenshots provided by the other services. Here, you can have different resolutions as well. But in my opinion, the most important benefit of this service is the availability of local test at the time of website development. Here you can test your website pages for cross compatibility check through Web Tunnel or Command Line. This feature eliminates the need of any change and subsequent downtime, once your website goes live.
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