I have IE8 and firefox3.6.3 installed on my laptop. I am also planning to install opera. Shouldn’t that be enough for browser testing for a newbie like me?
When one instals multiple browsers, does one just run some of them and then test the sites on the browsers or is it necessary to save them? Will I not be reducing the space occupied on my pc by not saving all the browsers?
If you are in a great hurry, having the browsers installed on your computer may save you some time. If you are not in a rush, you can use http://browsershots.org/ to see how all the browsers will render you web pages.
I sometimes check with Safari and Chrome as well as the ones you have mentioned.
I test in IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9, FF, Safari and Chrome.
I think most people here do this too.
Browsers do not take up large amounts of disk space, especially if you set the cache small for the ones that you don’t use for your personal browsing.
Of course that will not tell you if your scripts work or if your print CSS works - just whether your page looks okay on the screen.
To test in multiple browsers properly you need the browsers installed on your computer.
There isn’t much difference between the way pages display in different versions of the same browser (at least most of the time) with the exception of IE. Testing in IE6, IE7, IE8, and the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera to make sure it will work for most people. Making sure your code passes W3C validation should take care of most of the rest.
Thanks, I had not thought to test my Print CSS. Typically, I build and check as I go with Firefox, and when I think I am close, I get out the others.
Picking any of the browsers (other than IE) and checking everything with that one first is sensible. You don’t need to be testing everything in all of the browsers until you know it works in one. Then check the others.
You just don’t use IE as the first browser to test in because where there are differences it is better to patch what works for other browsers to work with IE rather than the other way around as then you end up with less patch code.
I support IE7, IE8, FF2+, OP9+, the latest Chrome and the latest Safari for Windows.
The browsers don’t take up much disk space, relatively speaking, and I have the latest versions of each on my desktop and the previous version on my laptop.
I use IE8 as my default browser for development and in my experience in at least the last 12 months if I use validated xhtml and valid css I haven’t had any browser incompatibility problems with rendering.
I won’t touch html5 or css3 for commercial work until they officially become recommendations (errr…I mean “standards” ;)) and are fully supported by the browsers I support.
Of course that will not tell you if your scripts work or if your print CSS works - just whether your page looks okay on the screen.
To test in multiple browsers properly you need the browsers installed on your computer.
Thanks, Stephen. I will follow that advice. Dr John, Kalon, CSU-Bill, thanks for the inputs given by all of you.
Picking any of the browsers (other than IE) and checking everything with that one first is sensible. You don’t need to be testing everything in all of the browsers until you know it works in one. Then check the others.
Can I just pick any browser other than IE? Is any one of the browsers better over the others for this purpose? I mean, is there one browser which can be considered the most ideal one for the initial testing? Can I just chose firefox for this purpose?
I think you’ll find most people will recommend Firefox.
Personally I prefer to use IE8 but that is mainly because IE has always been my default browser and I don’t have any problems using it as my development browser.
I think if you use valid html and css code it doesn’t really matter whether you use the latest version of IE or FF.