Browser Preview

tool?

[2_much]

Is there a tool that allows you to type in a web address, pick a browser (IE 5.0, IE6.0, NN 4.0, etc), and preview what the page would look like?

I'd like to be able to see pages from the different browsers without having to install them.

Thanks!

[keyplyr]

Well, there's anybrowser.com [anybrowser.com] however IMO it's garbage :)

[ergophobe]

Net Mechanic and another French site (probably the same thing ultimately) will actually render your page on something like 15 different machines and then send you a jpg. It's a pay service though

$135/yr/domain
$15/view

I've never used it, but they do have screenshots I think. Ultimately pretty cumbersome, but the only way to be sure that all the quirks and so on were truly shown. I don't think any simulator could handle that.

Tom

[Marcia]

There's also browsersizer, if they're still around.

[theboyduck]

I've got a plan - its crazy enough that it might just work:

1. WebmasterWorld is a massive community of webmasters (really?! :o)

2. Each community member has a variety of browsers on a variety of platforms at their disposal.

3. Most members do not have every combination of browser/platform that they would like to test their pages under.

4. Between us we cover all the combinations of browsers and platforms that anyone could ever need.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this, and you can probably see flaws in the plan already, but bear with me:

Why don't we all get together and test pages for each other? Surely this would be better than paying some third party to do this for us.

The main problem I can foresee is not enough mac/linux/less popular browser/platform combo users to cope with demand.

I really haven't thought this through a great deal (like you can't tell :) ) - but with some extra thought and bags of effort I'm sure a group of us would be able to pull something like this off and set up a community for the rest of the members.

Perhaps as a starter a forum could be set up to say help people organise "browser-rings". A browser-ring would be a small community where each user contributes a single browser/platform combination for the rest of the users in that browser-ring.

When someone wants a page tested, then a standardised request could be sent out to all the other members in the ring asking that they do the test and send the results.

I'm kinda excited about this idea, so I hope nobody rains on my parade - but I'll take it like a man if you do - please lets have some +ve/-ve feedback on this one.

So, whose with me? ;)

[JamesR]

>but I'll take it like a man if you do

Good :)

Not a bad idea but I think it would just lead to a bunch of site preview requests that we discourage around here. I would recommend having a copy of IE5, NS4, NS6, and opera on your desktop. That should cover 99.9% of the viewing issues out there.

[theboyduck]

Not a bad idea but I think it would just lead to a bunch of site preview requests that we discourage around here.

I can understand why - it would generate a lot of completely useless posts on the site.

I would recommend having a copy of IE5, NS4, NS6, and opera on your desktop. That should cover 99.9% of the viewing issues out there.

Yes, I agree - those browsers, running on Windows, cover a large proportion of the browser market.

But I think what I'm really interested in is setting up a community where Linux, Mac and Windows users could get together to exchange screenshots.

From my own selfish point of view, I only run Linux and Windows, so I have no idea what my sites look like on say IE on a Mac - and similarly I expect there's Mac users out there who want to know what their site looks like on Linux.

I'm pretty sure my sites look okay on the Mac, and I don't lose any sleep over not being able to test them with a Mac - however I'm still interested in finding out what they do look like on a Mac, and I think there's a lot of designers out there, with limited resources, who'd be interested in doing the same.

*If* I set up a community where I could put similar minded webmasters in touch with each other to form mini-communities of browser-rings, which streamlined the whole process of requesting a screenshot for a page from members of your browser-ring - are there many of you out there who'd be interested in joining?

(So we don't litter the discussion with just one word yes/no replies it's best to just stickymail me the yes/no-only replies.)

[tedster]

Let's put this discussion on hold for a bit, so we can discuss this with Brett and the other mods. I like the idea, but we need to look at it from several angles - and mostly NOT use WmW for building satellite communites.

So, bear with me -- we'll get back to it.

[tedster]

Here's the ruling - I take the burden on this one.

First, although I really like the idea, WmW will not take on the liabilities that could be involved in this project.

Second, we won't set the precedent of allowing the board to be used for recruiting to another community.

Hope you all understand. There IS a real need there, and I wish you the best in finding a way to fill it.

-Tedster

[Brett_Tabke]

Thanks Tedster.

When we first started WebmasterWorld the topic of a screen shot exchange forum came up repeatidly. I thought it was an excellent idea. Code was written to manage it all and is still here on my disk.

About a month before I was ready to put it online last year, Nimda hit. Many forums and sites that allowed people to upload files (such as avatar files) were severely hit by hackers using the upload feature to inject scripts/code on to disk.

The hardest thing for a hacker is to get code on to a target sites disk. Once there, standard exploits can be run to execute the code and more-than-likely, open the system wide up.

It became pretty obvious that allowing people to upload data - any data - is a major security risk [internetnews.com] regardless of the precautions. Even those utils that upload straight to a database such as SQL is a risk (they can use db exploits to get the data back out [theregister.co.uk]).

The other problem, is that of whisper promotion, and other "optimization" tricks. The head CTO for Yahoo says, "..any where you give people the opportunity to contribute content or rate items, you will have someone that exploits the system". Even though we are one of the friendlest communities on the web, we've already seen much of that here with post counts, and "over optimized" posts (including: hidden text and hidden links within posts).

So, based on those two things, we've passed on the screen shot exchange.

[tedster]

New thread started: the challenges of a browser-check exchange:

[webmasterworld.com...]