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October 25, 2005
Are your website visitors seeing what you're seeing?
One of the greatest challenges I have as a web developer is making sure that a client's website renders as accurately as possible across multiple browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Since each browser vendor interprets the standards differently, you would be amazed to see how a website looks in different browsers and machines.
Fortunately for me and my clients, I have a number of computers that I can test websites on. Testing Windows to Macs, Internet Explorer to Opera, 800x600 to 1024x768 is fairly easy for me. But what about you, the business owner who paid good money for a website that looks great on your machine? How do you know what your website looks like on other machines?
Luckily there are services available to test to see exactly what your website looks like on different machine and browser platforms. Typically these services will send you screen shots of a single web page in different browsers and operating systems. More sophisticated services allow you to log into their testing servers and surf your website just like a visitor would see it.
The pricing for these services ranges from $15 for a one-time usage to about $1,000 for an annual subscription with all the bells and whistles.
Here are two services that I have used in the past:
BrowserCam
NetMechanic's Browser Photo
If you are relying on your website to generate leads or sales to your business, then I would highly recommend that you spend a little money to make sure that you are not accidentally turning away visitors. Let's face it, a visitor coming to your website will blame you for the display problems and not their browser.
Posted by Mark Beck on October 25, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
You mention standards in passing, but it should be stressed more. Coding sites that validate both HTML and CSS are *much* easier to get to display consistently.
In my work I've found that if I code pages that validate I only need to visually confirm tham on IE6 and Firefox (on XP).
You also need to know what traffic your site is seeing - if none of your visitors are coming on a Sun platform, validating your site on a Sun box may be a waste of your time.
Posted by: Boyink | Oct 25, 2005 3:50:02 PM
Just to add to the point above about validating web pages. You can do so at http://validator.w3.org.
Posted by: Josh Hinds | Oct 26, 2005 4:51:05 AM
You're right, HTML that validates will render across the different browsers more consistently.
My concern, and reason for this post, is that there are a lot of sites that were coded either in a WYSIWYG editor (FrontPage) or cheaply by a friend or relative. I still run across a number of websites that "break" when viewed in a non-IE browser.
For those business owners who are familiar with web standards, this shouldn't be a problem. But I wanted to give a heads-up about this issue to those who are not very technical.
Posted by: Mark Beck | Oct 26, 2005 9:28:40 AM
This is an awesome article. I learned a lot of great tips and pointers to help me test what my visitors are seeing. Thanks for the information!!
Posted by: WebtrafficJunkie | Feb 10, 2006 1:02:44 PM
