A quick way to test the site in different desktop browsers

More and more worthy of occasion is with web developers in order to abandon the full support of IE6 in the created projects.

Someone provides graceful degradation with little blood , but someone radically says goodbye to old browsers, almost deliberately seasoning the site with modern technologies and showing a stub in old browsers offering urgent updates.

However, for all categories of web developers, as well as their clients, it is useful to have non-burdensome tools for cross-browser testing.

The most reliable way is to raise several virtual machines, where everything can be thoroughly tested (including pulling the window border, scrolling, and even more so to see how JS works). But often you just need to look at the site and see if everything is okay with it in general. Or provide this opportunity to the customer.

A classic of the genre for solving this problem is a web service:

Universal but long browsershots.org

It allows you to get a screenshot not only from a specific browser, but also to select its version and the OS in which the browser is running.

One drawback is the queue. You can wait for the screenshots of the desired page for half an hour or more.

I was looking for solutions that exist in the form of web services and do not require registration or payment . That is, those that could be used not only by the developer, but also by his customer, as an independent tool (met with an unpleasant situation when the customer had in IE some kind of half-cut panel that redraws the design of email addresses - do not go in such a situation to the customer with his laptop).

There were two suitable web services that gave screenshots after a few seconds of waiting, but with a common drawback - they are friends only with IE, but this is usually not enough, because the rest of the browsers are cross-platform and many of them allow you to keep several portable- versions on the same machine without virtualization.

Multipurpose www.thumbalizr.com and its IE7

This service was actually created to create “previews” of sites and even provided with the corresponding API, but if you send it to take a screenshot of such a cunning page as inet.ya.ru , it becomes clear that IE7 works as a engine for rendering screenshots on the service . And it is useful to anyone who upgraded IE to the eighth, or does not use Windows at all.

Optimal ipinfo.info/netrenderer

The service can take screenshots in IE 5.5 (for necrophiles), IE 6, 7 and 8. That is, it is great for testing. There is also a mode where in one screenshot the differences in layout between IE6 and IE7 are shown. It is convenient, but I hope that in the future it will be possible to compare with the eighth IE immediately.

Convenient browserling.com with the ability to scroll and click

About the service told in the comments. It is good, because the only one of the above allows you to click, scroll, test JS (you get something like VNC access to the remote window with the desired browser). The disadvantage for such a chic service is predictable - the turn of those who want it. Although it is rendered



gloriously : Browserling puts at your disposal any IE from 5.5 to 9, as well as the latest versions of Opera, Chrome, Safari and Firefox. In this case, the queue is general, regardless of which browser you are signing up for. Because of this, I personally frankly want to spank those who take the queue with the goal of chasing available on all Firefox platforms.



After you wait for your turn, you will have five minutes at your disposal, then you will be dropped and if you didn’t have time to check something, you will have to occupy the “last” one again (at the time of testing the service I met 10 people in line, but I note that many of the “standing” ahead - the line threw or tormented the service for less than five minutes available). In fairness, I must say that there is also a paid option without queues.

Your version

I really look forward to commenting on links to similar services, but I suggest that you adhere to the criteria described above: the service should be publicly accessible without registration and free.