Itchy Hands

An open-source way to test sites for cross-browser compatibility

One of the difficult tasks involved of developing a website is testing for cross-browser compatibility. Large agencies probably have a bank of computers running different operating systems and browsers to test their websites, but most of us can’t afford such a set up. Thankfully, I’ve found a solution – and it’s open source too!

Commercial site testing services like “SiteVista”:http://www.sitevista.com and “Browsercam”:http://www.browsercam.com cost big bucks and prices start at “US$9″:http://www.sitevista.com/signup.asp and “US$19″:http://www.browsercam.com/Pricing.aspx respectively. However if you’re tight on cash, “Browsershots.org”:bs is a great alternative.

“Browsershots.org”:bs is an open source project that distributes the work of making browser screenshots among “screenshot factories”. You submit a request for a screenshot of your site, your request gets added to the queue and in a couple of minutes your screenshots are ready. Here’s “an example”:http://browsershots.org/website/377064/.

Best of all, because they’re an open source project, they’re _absolutely free!_. From their mission statement:

bq. We’re trying to make this service easy to use, open for all (including access to the source code) and 100% free, as in free beer.

Of course, they lack the advanced features that the professional services provide. But if you’re a freelancer or just playing with your blog template and don’t need immediate, on-demand testing it’s more than enough. The only drawback is that it can take up to 15 minutes to get your screenshots, but that situation is only for the less common browsers. They’re also only a beta service, so I hope that they don’t pull the plug on it suddenly.

So go ahead and make a screenshot of your site. You never know how it looks like on Safari for Mac OSX, or Epiphany for Linux. And if you’re a webmaster with resources to spare, consider contributing to the project and running a screenshot factory on your server too.

[bs]http://browsershots.org/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 at 3:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.