Cross-Browser Tools for Web Designers

For Web Designers, one of the most intricate difficulties of building a website is ensuring its compatibility across all popular web browsers, including older legacy browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.

Developing a website that is cross-browser compliant is a highly useful skill for any Web Designer and although browsers such as IE6 tend to not be favored by the majority of developers, 22% of all internet users continue to use Internet Explorer 6 alone as of November 2009.

In a nutshell, this reinforces that cross-browser compatibility is an important issue that cannot be ignored and is exactly why we build IE6 compatible websites as standard at Creare.

Although of course the most fool-proof method of inspecting a websites compatibility is across multiple machines, there is in-fact a number of tools available for Web Designers that will check website functionality across multiple browsers.

IE NetRenderer

http://www.ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

Showcased both in our video blog and initially mentioned in my Essential Online Tools for Web Designers blog post, IE NetRenderer is tool that lets you see how a website would look in older versions of Internet Explorer (upto IE 5.5).

BrowserShots

http://www.browsershots.org/

BrowserShots will check a website’s compatibility across 50+ different web browser versions for completely free. Just simply type in a Website’s URL and come back 30 minutes later to see the results.

IE Tester

http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

IETester is an open-source web browser that contains the rendering engines of IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and IE8. One of the best features of this software is the ability to browse websites using an older version of Internet Explorer without having to rely on a screenshot tool alone.

Litmus

http://www.litmusapp.com/

Litmus is a paid service that allows you to instantly see a website across multiple browsers without having to wait and additionally provides compatibility reports to help ensure cross-browser compliance.

Windows Virtual PC

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

One highlight of the newly released Windows 7 is the ability to run a virtualised copy of Windows XP, enabling website designers to run a fully-functional copy of Internet Explorer 6.

Using Windows XP mode, in addition to being able to check if a website looks as intended in IE6, it allows a developer to test if elements such as Javascript, Flash and other Plugins are also compatible, something which can’t be achieved fully in the other tools listed above.

Additional Resources

If you’re looking for even further Web Designers resources, make sure to check out our Video Blog on how to design an ‘Apple-Style Navigation‘ or alternatively, read my recent blog post on CSS3 Resources for Web Designers.