In the discussion forum of my online course, Making Mediation Your Day Job, Aimee wrote,
Someone told me I should be careful to make sure my website looks good on other people’s computers too. Can you give me tips for how to do that?
Websites don’t render, or display, the same way across all browsers.
If you’re on a PC, you probably don’t know what your site looks like in the standard Apple browser, Safari. Likewise, if you’re on a Mac, you may not have any idea if your site looks the way you expect it to in Internet Explorer. And some of the less experienced or credible website designers may not bother to check before invoicing you for their work.
But you can check for yourself, for free. In my reply to Aimee, I told her that there’s a good little online service that’ll visit your site and take screenshots of a chosen page as viewed in various browsers.
BroswerShots lets you choose from a multitude of browsers to check; the most important ones are the popular Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome because most of your visitors are using those. Tick the check boxes for the most recent version of each, as well as a prior version or two, since a lot of folks don’t update to current versions of their favorite browser.
© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at MakingMediationYourDayJob.com.
