Are there any programs that render websites from the point of view of different browsers? In other words, I'd like to be able to open and view websites as if it were Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.
It would be a bonus if the utility has a paned interface that lets you view pages side by side.
Thanks!
also can use adobe's https://browserlab.adobe.com/index.html
BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences.
updated,
you can also litmusapp, another excellent utility, allowing you to test a website in different browsers but also emails.
http://browsershots.org/
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I have worked on a chrome plugin for one of the cloud based product. For The Chrome we have used third partly JS libraries like BackboneJS etc. Now I have to design a Firefox Extension, I am trying to figure out how much code we can reuse. Apparently spending few hours with Mozilla Developer site it seems like for Firefox Extension we have to use XUL for the UI. Not sure if we can use the html and javascript functions from Chrome App for the Firefox Extension, or what would be the approach to estimate the effort. My Understanding is that we have to do it from the scratch since like Chrome in FF we dont have concepts like background page etc.
There is nothing inherent that prevents you from implementing a UI in HTML/JS. You might have to wrap it in an XUL <iframe>, or <browser> (potentially other elements) within a <window> (Firefox will open pure HTML).
The key issue regarding extensions is that they execute in an elevated security context vs. webpages. As such, they have the ability to affect a much larger range of things in the browser and on the users system. When <iframe>, or <browser> elements are used, they have a property type which defaults to having the contents operating in the elevated security context. The default value is type="chrome" which makes the content opened be in the extension's higher security context.
Additional docs from MDN regarding security concerns with opening content in <iframe>, or <browser> elements which is not sourced from your extension distribution: Security best practices in extensions and Displaying web content in an extension without security issues
As to your JavaScript: You should be able to re-use a significant amount of it. At a minimum, the logic. Obviously, there will be more significant differences in how you accomplish interfacing to the aspects of the browsers which are not covered under standards documents (e.g. DOM manipulation should be very close, just as it is for webpage JS).
I am quite sure that with the good old Firebug, it was shown in the Layout tab, together with the box-sizing property.
Is it possible to tell in the Web Developer too? There is a Box Model tab which is quite similar to the Layout tab of Firebug, but it does not show this information.
Btw: I thought the built-in Web Developer was built on Firebug, but when reading about it it actually seems that they are two quite separate things.
That feature is currently only available in Firefox Nightly.
A client is reporting a problem using our Web-Based application. It seems that their users are opening Multiple tabs while using the site. It leads to a problem where they lose track of what tab they are on and sometimes enter invalid data or view data in the wrong context believing that they are on a different tab.
Though I have proposed different solutions for them they only want to consider one solution: disabling tabbed browsing when their users are on our site, and enabling it again when they are not.
Is such a thing possible? All the users are using Windows (XP, I believe, although possibly W7) and Internet Explorer 7+.
I wasn't sure if there is a Windows Scripting solution that can accomplish this, or maybe an ActiveX control that has this capability.
EDIT: 2012/08/13 One feature I am now considering is a custom Internet Explorer application. Something similar to what the poster is talking about here:
http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/ie8-virtual-layer-custom-ie-settings
and here
http://www.vandyke.com/support/tips/ieobject.html
This is new ground to me so if someone with experience here has any ideas I would love to hear it.
No, you cannot do this. IE will only allow the user to make choices around how tabs work, not the website. It does not have a feature for controlling this on a per-site basis.
If modifying the application to behave differently when it detects this happening is off the table, your client (the people) can just disable tabbed browsing completely using administrative tools.
I have developer toolbar, any other tools I am missing ?
I am not doing any fancy graphics/html 5.
I have just been told I need to a support ie8; so want to know if I need to test in both, or just ie8.
Have used ms superpreview, but this is only good for static sites - I am developig a large data driven jsp website. and as far as I can see there is not any easy way to test on both ie6 ie8, without using a separate machine (albeit virtual).
edit
Will ietester remove my standard ie install (I want to keep developer toolbar). ietest will enable me to test under both, and then develop usign developer toolbar in whichever is my browser (ie6/ie8)
IE6 one of the most dumbest browser and biggest pain for both designer and developer. There is no guarantee that your site will work in both IE8 and IE6. As for checking you can use the IE Tester software which is free. Some even say that we should stop considering IE6 :)
You'll need to test in both. IE6 renders pages in a vastly different manner than IE7 or IE8.
Definitely not. If you need a page / site to work properly in IE6 then develop for that. More often than not a page that works in IE6 will work in everything else.
IE6 in particular is terrible with it's calculations regarding spacing, especially where padding is involved.
Test in both browsers on all systems possible.
Simple answer: NO.
you will need to test in all browsers you support as they all have differences to some degree.
IE6 is terrible at rendering css correctly.
you can use a tool called IETester to view your site in multiple version of IE although you wont have developer toolbar support. The other solution is to have different version on an windows image in a virtual machine.
The best way to develope a site is to develope it in a browser with the best support of css. (firefox, chrome, etc). Once you have done that then start adding browser specific fixes for browsers which do not display correctly.
Have a look at this article for how to setup your css file structure CSS
IE6 doesn't support HTML5 and CSS 3. In essence, your IE8 markups may not render well (in fact, many won't work at all) on IE6 (unless you do some CSS hack for IE).
If you want your system to work in both IE6 and IE8, test your system on both browser versions and make visual adjustments (CSS, HTML markup, etc.) accordingly.
Short answer: You cannot just code in IE8, you will need to test in IE6, too.
It's a very strange request to start coding only for those two browsers. Are you absolutely sure that's what you want? For example, what about IE7 or IE9? If you DO want to make your site as compatible as possible, in as many browsers as possible, you should make your site Standards Compliant (e.g. HTML 4 or XHTML).
Even if you don't, it's definitely where I'd start if I was going to focus on just IE6 and IE8. Unfortunately, IE6 will still likely give you trouble, but making your HTML/CSS standards compliant will make it easier a lot to ensure compatibility with IE8.
Tip to remember in IE6: If things aren't lining up exactly the way you imagine, it might be a carriage return in your HTML (yes, IE6 doesn't always ignore them *facepalm*).
Edit: Ah, corporate logic. I see.
I am having my first foray into website design and I am learning a lot. I am also now seeing why web developers are not a huge fan of developing for Internet Explorer. Nothing seems to work how I expect. However, since the website has to work cross-browser, I am spending time looking at it in Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Something that is very non-obvious to me, however, is how to tell where problems lie in the website.
For example, the layout of one of my pages forces a footer to the bottom of the page. It looks great in Chrome and Firefox, but there's something broken in IE that make the footer align to the right (and cause a horizontal scroll to appear). I have played around with the code, but nothing really is responding to how I want in IE (even though it does in other browsers).
Are there any tools that can help "debug" the problems on a web site so fixing it is more than just a trial-and-error approach? Thanks.
One of my favorites that works in all browsers is X-Ray. You simply stick the link on that page into a bookmark and it loads some external JavaScript on top of the page you're testing. It reveals a bunch of parameters about the DOM object you click on, as well as its hierarchy in the model.
As for your specific footer problem, I would look to a potential lack of clearing of floats and divs that are wider than their parent containers somewhere up the line.
There are frameworks like GWT, ext-js, YUI which hide a lot of the browser bugs from you. But today (near the end of 2009), there still isn't a good, realiable way to narrow down browser issues and to fix them.
PS: I'm collecting tools that help during debugging here: Which tools do you use to debug HTML/JS in your browser?
I assume you have checked that your code is valid, with
HTML validator, for example: W3C Markup Validation Service
CSS checker, for example: W3C CSS Validation Service
And, of course, you should have correct doctype in your html file. Without doctype, some browsers go to quirks mode to emulate bugs in old browsers.
A cross-browser JavaScript library, like jQuery and its UI components, can be very helpful in avoiding idiosyncrasies between browsers. Microsoft provides the IE Developer Toolbar, it's not quite as easy to use as Firebug, but can still be very helpful. A Just-In-Time debugger like MS Script Debugger or Visual Studio are also a time saver.
I like Firebug for Firefox
and IE8 has Developer Tools from the tools menu and IE Developer Toolbar for older versions.
Chrome has similar tools from the page menu.
All of which allow you to see elements on the page as they are rendered in their specific browsers, which I usually find very helpful in debugging browser specific problems.