Place to test your site on different browsers?

or where do you get all the old browsers?

[Drum]

I am new to CSS.

I have created my site all in CSS and now I want to start testing it to see where I need to fine tune it on different browsers.

Where do you find a place to download old browsers?

Or, is there a service out there that will test your site for you and then email you back your screen shots so you can see where the problems are?

[ncw164x]

You could try this
http://www.applythis.com/browsersizer/

ncw164x

[jdMorgan]

Drum,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

See this search list of previous threads [google.com], and especially this thread on installing multiple versions of IE [webmasterworld.com].

Jim

[mcavill]

You can download pretty much all mainstream browsers from [browsers.evolt.org...]

I usually only test on IE5 + and MonzillaFirebird as the majority of my users use IE, but I like Firebird as well...

[dcrombie]

Drum, the site you want is BrowserCam
;)

<edit: or iCapture - lets you take screenshots of your site in Safari (free)>

[edited by: dcrombie at 12:50 pm (utc) on Dec. 22, 2003]

[claus]

http //www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html

older ones: http //www.dejavu.org/emulator.htm

That said, you really shouldn't build your site for specific browsers - do follow the w3c recommendations in stead and go for valid HTML, it makes life so much easier for you and the rest of the web developer community. Anyway, i reckon this is probably exactly what you have done already.

/claus

[Drum]

claus,

I have been at the W3C site for most of the day and I have learn a ton.

Should I validate HTML 4.0 Transitional or XHTML 1.0 Strict for my pages?

It looks like the sites which use "Strict" seem to work in more browsers then "Transitional".

[claus]

Edit: I had to edit the first part of this post, as the xml vs html issues really deserve a (probably long) thread of their own

I'm not the right one to advice regarding html vs. xml - there are people recommending both as well as people suggesting that the other flavour should never have seen daylight. Both sides speak reason to some extent, imho. I have no strong opinion myself apart from "choose the right tool for the task and follow the rules" - this will also make it easier to change to another HTML or X(HT)ML flavour should the need arise. I'm doing html myself, and i might or might not change to x-whatever at some point - i tend to consider this once in a while (annually or so), sofar i'm not convinced but others are, even strongly.

By the way, here are a few useful links for maximum access to your pages (insert a colon somewhere):

Accessibility:
http //validator.w3.org/
http //www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/
http //www.vischeck.com/
http //bobby.watchfire.com/
http //valet.webthing.com/

Browsers:
http //browsers.evolt.org/

Caching:
http //www.ircache.net/cgi-bin/cacheability.py
http //www.web-caching.com/cacheability.html

/claus

---

Btw, i just noticed your post count: Welcome to WebmasterWorld Drum :)

[edited by: claus at 3:51 pm (utc) on Dec. 23, 2003]

[mipapage]

Nice post claus, invaluble stuff for sure.

One to add to the list, just so that you get the idea behind (x)html...

h*tp://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2003/09/03/markup_bulle/

I've been monkeying with serving the right mime type for one of my new sites...

h*tp://www.webstandards.org/learn/askw3c/sep2003.html

It's not so hard if you already have valid code. Scary though when I think about our next job - a 5 language site, 4 of which have many accented characters!

- mipapage

---

Added
I sure needed that caching stuff, thanks...

[victor]

Another accessibility site, one I use a lot:
[cynthiasays.com...]

[Drum]

Thanks for all your links everyone.

My testing is getting better, however my site on Netscape 4.xx looks poor.

What are your feelings on making a separate css file just for Netscape 4.xx as shown in the Mako4CSS com site? The idea is it will detect the Netscape 4.xx browser and feed it a different css file that is fine tuned just for that browser.

[claus]

Here's a good long thread from August discussing Netscape 4.X and what to do about it: [webmasterworld.com...] - pageoneresults mentions a way to get around it in post #23 - it involves using an @import rule. It's done like this with two separate stylesheets:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css-for-all-including-NN4.css" type="text/css"> 
<style type="text/css">@import url(css-not-for-NN4.css);</style> 

The first is read by all browsers, and the second only by those that understands the @import, so the second wil "overwrite" the first for those browsers. For alternate methods, see this post by papabaer: [webmasterworld.com...]

Imho, to design a specific stylesheet for any one specific browser goes somewhat against the "reason for using standards", so i'd rather feed it wih no styles at all than develop a separate stylesheet for it, but if that browser flavour is used by a large proportion of your visitors you might find it valuable to do so anyway.

Here's another good and lenghty discussion from September on websites that might still have a large proportion of NN4 users: [webmasterworld.com...]

/claus

[confusedxx]

tag this topic for later