One of the many obstacles I have come up against when designing websites for clients is they naturally tend to focus on how the design appears on their own PC, and require a little convincing that the wider world of web users, particularly their current or potential clients, may be seeing something a little different due to the wide variety of PC screens (monitors) and browsers in use.
I have written a previous post on the optimum design for a website (960px wide with 700px page fold) so won’t cover that ground again – what I want to bring to your attention is the variety of tools to test a coded website design on a variety of platforms (PC, Mac, Linux, etc operating systems and the wide variety of browsers).
Being an avid Mac-user I naturally use Safari and also have Firefox and Chrome installed. I also use Parallels desktop with separate installations of Windows XP to run Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 for testing websites.
However there are a variety of online tools for rendering websites on different platforms and browsers:
IE Net Renderer – great instant free tool to test a page in all versions of Internet Explorer, although it does not scroll down the page.
BrowserCam – complete and comprehensive suite of platforms and browsers. Free trials available, delayed results.
