Chris Brandrick

When coding any website it is imperative to check that your code renders in a suitable fashion (preferably valid of course) on all browsers, be it Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer or  Opera  making sure your site is accessible to as many potential visitors is something that can not be ignored; and why should it? If you decided to code for just one browser exclusively you would be denying yourselves could be visitors.

Of course checking that your site looks right in individual browsers can be a chore, so before downloading every browser on the planet make sure your code is valid, sure your code may well be pretty stable but different browsers has a habit unfortunately of rendering code in various alternative ways.

I recently stumbled upon a helpful site which allows you to enter any given URL to see how it appears in various browser windows, in fact it offers over 15 browsers (various versions) to try it in.  The site in question is Browser Shots (http://browsershots.org), it offers a simple interface and plenty of options for your desired results, from window size (800×600, 1024 etc), colour depth, and whether flash, javascript and java should be enabled and if so by which version. Upon submitting your desired URL the site takes a few minutes (so be patient) to retrieve your results, and when it does you will be presented with clear images of how your site looks, so click through them to spot any inconsistency’s.

If your currently in need of checking cross browser compatibility for your site Browser Shots is a highly recommended solution.