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Besides which ones, what is the best way to get them all on your system?
Besides that, use a recent version of Mozilla FireFox and a recent version of Opera. I used to use several versions of each for testing, as well as all the Gecko variants, but found that, a.) Most users of those browsers keep them up-to-date, and, b.) There really aren't that many important rendering differences between the Gecko browsers for several versions back.
To install non-IE browsers, just install them to different directories on your system.
Sounds good, but no Netscape?
Not really. Netscape 7.x is the same as Mozilla/Firefox and Netscape 6.x is the same as Mozilla 0.9 (and both of those are dead now). You might want to have a copy of Netscape 4.79 just to make sure the site is readable and doesn't crash the thing, but that's it.
Currently, I would recommend having a copy of Firefox 1.0 (based on Mozilla 1.7), and a copy of Mozilla 1.4 (the previous stable release - there are a few display differences between them).
One other important browser I would add to the testing list is Lynx: it is an excellent tool for guaging both accessibility and readability from a spider perspective. You can get Lynx for Windows (actually, it's a DOS program), as well as Linux and other Unixes.
I've got Lynx now, what should I be looking for? Just basic readability?
Yes, basic readability and logical order of the page contents, as well as functioning links. It gives a passing impression of how a spider "sees" the page.
As for Netscape 6.x, it was never very popular, and it was so buggy and crash-prone that almost all users have upgraded or switched to another browser. It is unsupportable for these reasons: Mozilla 1.4 (Netscape 7.1) is the earliest you need to check.
I work primarily on a PC but generally have it checked on a Mac before considering myself finished.
I haven't seen that at *all* -- only accounting for *maybe* .3% across many different domains, covering different topics and interests.
Nonetheless, I still use browsercam.com to test all sites. Great resource.
S
W3Schools [w3schools.com] shows nearly ten times that level, and growing. And if you're in a niche that serves the arts (music or visual) you can see as high as 7% to 9% Macintosh traffic. Over all my client sites right now, Mac IE is running about the same level as Firefox on Windows, or nearly 4%
I know you are using browsercam to check for rendering errors - that's a good step. There also can be a self-fulfilling prophecy involved with any minority browser, no matter what the OS. If your pages don't work well for a certain user agent, then you won't get many page views for it in your server logs, either.
And this is where javascript on your pages can be a cross-platform nightmare. Getting a DHTML menu (for instance) to work and work well on Mac browsers can be very rough.
WebDon -
I've got VMware so I might install Mac on that. I've been wondering about that.
lovethecoast -
browsercam.com looks awesome. "100% SURE GUARANTEED" instills confidence.
tedster -
Damn good point with the self-fulfilling prophecy. Why would you say browsercam is only a good step? I don't use DHTML or Javascript whatsoever and am a happier man for it.
...line break before and after <p> but not <div>
Just to clarify, do you mean the default top and bottom margins for a <p>? I'm assuming that <div> is still treated as a block level element - that is, any elements that follow the div begin on a new line, and don't just continue to the right.
Why would you say browsercam is only a good step? I don't use DHTML or Javascript whatsoever and am a happier man for it.
If there is no functionality to check, then a screenshot is probably all you need - just check on the rendering. But if there is any functionality (like form verifiction, for instance) then browsercam is just "a step", and not really a full test of a Mac version of your page.
You're right, I meant two line breaks before and after.
A <p> tag is rendered with one "line break" preceding and one line break following, as is any block level element. The extra space you see is the margin-top and margin-bottom that the browser assigns to the block-level element, <p>.
But there is only one "line break" in each place, even though the visual appearance of a default <p> can be mimicked with two <br> tags.
I only bring this up because it is important when you begin to use CSS to handle the way your paragraphs are rendered.
It's all about the box model and margin collapsing rules. Do you want two paragraphs to have less space between them? Then use a margin rule in your CSS that assigns less margin-top and margin-bottom than the default. If you start to think in terms of line breaks here, you can make yourself a bit nutty.
Another way of saying it is that paragraphs and div's actually share the same "structure," in that they're both block-level elements. The only difference is the default margin that browsers apply to paragraphs (whereas they don't apply any margin to div's by default).
