How good is Dreamweaver BrowserLab for previewing web pages?

[Lulu]

Hi

 

I've been testing my little site offline on IE9, Chrome and Firefox and it works ok. How best do I test it across other versions of IE, mac browsers etc before uploading it?

 

I use Dreamweaver so have BrowserLab installed but I'm not sure if this is a good product or whether I should be looking at a 3rd party product,or downloading the MSN virtual pc along with the various browsers.

 

I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of those with a lot more experience of this sort of thing than me!

 

Thanks.

[Wickham]

You can use Browsershots http://browsershots.org/ Remember to add more time after every 27 or 28 minutes as it will stop processing all your browser choices after 30 minutes otherwise.

 

You could download ietester http://ietester.en.softonic.com/

 

Personally, I construct websites in Firefox, test in IE9, then IE8, then IE7 then IE6, then at the very end on Google Chrome and Opera and Safari. However, I often don't need to test Chrome, Opera and Safari as if a site works on Firefox it's usually OK on them.

 

Dreamweaver is known to be no good as a browser. I don't have it as I code manually.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Wickham

[newseed]

If you code for Firefox and make sure it validates then the chances are very good that it will behave as it should in IE9 to IE7 as well as Google Crome and Safari. In rare cases will you need to make tweaks for non-Firefox browsers.

 

As for IE6, I don't bother. I can't remember the last time someone ever complained that the site doesn't look right in IE6. It has to be at least 2 years ago.

[Lulu]

Thanks Wickham and Eddie. I'll check out the sites mentioned.