Not all browsers are the same. If your website looks good in Internet Explorer, it may not look good in Firefox. You could be losing a lot of visitors to your website if it is not displayed correctly to your visitors. They will simply click away from your competitors. You need to check how your website appears in various browsers.
So what should you do to check for cross-browser compatibility and which browsers should you test?
browser statistics
The most popular browsers used these days are: Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera. In September 2009, Firefox received the highest monthly usage at 46.6%, followed by Internet Explorer 7.
Ways to test your website for different browsers
If you are a website owner, don’t rely on your web designer to test your site on different browsers, screen resolutions, and operating systems. See for yourself, you can lose thousands of visitors if it is not displayed correctly. For web designers, use the methods below:
1. Install multiple browsers on your computer
You can install Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari browsers on the same computer without causing compatibility issues.
2. Online resources
Adobe Browser Lab
Sign up for an Adobe account, and then test your website. Alternatively, if you use Dreamweaver CS4 to design websites, you can download extensions for it.
navigator shots
Check the list of browser names, enter your URL and you will receive screenshots of how your website appears. It generates screenshots of a web page in more than 80 versions of the most common browsers used on Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac. The process takes time and you may have to wait up to an hour to view the screenshots.
browser camera
You can sign up for a free trial and get 24 hours of free usage for the screenshot service or a maximum of 200 screenshots.
IE NetRenderer
This site is a free service that allows you to check how Internet Explorer 7, 6, or 5.5 renders a website, viewed from a high-speed data center located in Germany. Just type your URL.
3.Firefox Add-on
This plugin allows you to load pages in IE with a single right click, or mark certain sites to *always* load in IE.
Advice
By validating all your web pages for the correct html (xhtml), you will avoid most of the problems associated with cross-browser compatibility. Most modern browsers will correctly display sites with clean html code.