One of the most difficult phases of website designing is validating your website against various available environments. Often, a website that looks and runs fine on a particular browser may look different on some other browser. Your website’s look and feel also depends on the running operating system. Setting up a suitable environment to test every browser is a difficult feat to achieve. With newer web browsers coming out every day, maintaining dedicated machines for each and every browser is not a cost effective option.
What if you could test your websites on different browsers without having to install anything? And what if all you needed to test the websites was any web browser. Fortunately, some applications are available which let you test your website on all browsers and platforms over a remote connection. Here, we are listing down some of the cross-browser platforms available on the Internet.
BrowserStack
Available Browsers / OS: (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari) / (Mac, Windows)
Mobile testing: Mobile Safari / Android Browser / Opera Mobile with original device configurations
Type of testing: Live testing on remote servers connected via secured tunnel.
Application: Web Browser based
License: 30 minute trial / Various paid plans
URL: www.browserstack.com
BrowserStack is a cross-browser, cross-OS cloud testing platform which lets you to directly connect to remote web browsers over secure SSH connection. Testing sessions are live and comes with a lot of useful developer tools. You can test your website on several browsers running on either Mac or Windows. Once you register and sign in to your BrowserStack account, you will be able to choose from various versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. The application also provides mobile browsers for testing your websites on mobile devices. The mobile device emulators have original device configurations so that you get a realistic mobile testing environment. Available mobile browsers include Mobile Safari, Android Browser or Opera Mobile for a number of popular mobile devices including iPad, iPhone and several Android phones and tablets. BrowserStack offers a free 30 minute trial period after which you need to switch to any of the available paid plans.
Cross Browser Testing
Available Browsers / OS: Over 1000 Browser / OS / Device combinations available
Type of testing: Live testing and Automated Screenshots
Application: Web Browser based
License: 7 day free trial / Various paid plans
Cross Browser Testing offers a complete suite of browser testing tools for computers as well as mobile devices. With more than 1000 Browser / OS combinations, this service lets you to test your websites on just about anything, with different resolution settings. It offers different tools for testing your sites’ functionality including AJAX, HTML Forms, JavaScript and Flash testing during live sessions. You can also verify the layout of your websites as rendered on different browsers through screenshots that are automatically captured. You may also compare the layouts as seen on different browsers. Cross Browser Testing also lets you to test your websites and files locally via a proxy server. It also features mobile browser testing for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry. There are also a set of debugging tools to aid you in your tests, as well as monitors for analyzing network traffic. Unlike BrowserStack, this application lets you to personalize the browsers’ configuration settings according to your testing requirements. Cross Browser Testing offers a 7 day trial period along with three featured paid plans.
Browserling
Available Browsers / OS: Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera available.
Type of testing: Live Interactive testing
Application: Web Browser based
License: Free / Paid
URL: browserling.com
Browserling is a small and lightweight browser testing platform with support for popular browsers like IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. What makes Browserling notable is the availability of a free plan for casual testing. The free plan gives you unlimited number of five minute testing sessions. It does not come with any testing or debugging tools and can only be used to preview websites in different browsers. However, its sister site Testling lets you run JavaScript tests and detect errors before deploying them. Browserling also features two additional paid plans for securely tunneling your browser through SSH. Paid users enjoy unlimited browser sessions and extra security. The dedicated plan also support browser to desktop interaction, which is useful for testing plugins, file downloads, etc.
BrowserShots
Available Browsers / OS: Various Browsers / Linux, Windows, Mac and BSD
Type of testing: Screenshot
Application: Web Browser based
License: Open Source / Free
URL: browsershots.org
BrowserShots takes the URL of your websites and displays the screenshots of the page as seen on different web browsers on different Operating Systems. The browser and the operating system can be chosen at the time of submitting the URL. It is a network of distributed computers running different browsers that load your URL, capture screenshots of the page and upload them to the BrowserShots server where you can see it. If the server already contains screenshots of the submitted URL, they will be directly fetched from the archives. The service is completely free and open source, though donations are also accepted.
Adobe BrowserLab
Available Browsers / OS: Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer / Windows and Mac
Type of testing: Screenshot
Application: Web Browser based
License: Free
URL: browserlab.adobe.com
Adobe BrowserLab is a free, online service that can accurately preview your websites on different browsers and operating systems. However, there aren’t many combinations of browsers and OS available and you see only countable versions of Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari available for Mac and Windows (that too, outdated). Nevertheless, Adobe BrowserLab gives you full scale screenshots of accurate browser renderings of the submitted URL, obtained in real time. It has an attractive UI with several viewing options, including a split-screen view for comparing screenshots. If you want to follow up a link present inside a screenshot, you will have to use Ctrl + Left Click. Rendered screenshots may take some time to load depending on you network connection speed. BrowserLab also integrates with Adobe’s Dreamweaver to further enhance your web designing productivity and visual testing. You need to sign in or create an Adobe ID first in order to use the service.
These testing tools do not require any downloads and can be accessed directly from your web browser. So, try out with these options and see if you like them or not.