I had the awful experience the other day when showing my blog to a friend on their computer. I found out what my blog actually looked like in IE6. As you probably know, web browsers tend to behave slightly differently to each other, handling formatting in different ways. So how do you know what your site looks like on a different browser?
The problem that IE6 was having with Pingable was that some screenshots I had used filled the entire width of the content column, and the margins of objects surrounding had coursed IE6 to push the right sidebar down to below the left sidebar…ugly.
Unless you own three different computers, a MAC, a Windows PC, and a Linux PC, it’s impossible to see what your site will look like on every possible web browser. Any number of your users could be browsing on a different browser that may be having all sorts of issues with the formatting of your site. So what’s the solution?
This site takes screenshots of your Web site in different web browsers then posts them for you to view. The process is rather slow, however, it is very reassuring to know what your site looks like on other browsers. It is well worth a visit if this sort of thing worries you.
Update: Another useful site on this topic: Any Browser
22 Responses to “What Does Your Blog Look Like On Other Browsers”
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- 15 Common Web Design Mistakes That You Should Avoid : Pingable.org | Blogging & Design
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WOW!!!
Very useful tool!
I shall use that very often - thanks so much!
The only downside to it is you can’t check roll-overs and other similar interactive web site features…
But it’s still nice!
Really cool Surely going to use it right now thanx for sharing
This is a great tool, and just what I have been looking for. Thanks a lot for sharing. Now I just need to figure out how to fix my page. seems like it’s not working on every browser.
It’s really important to understand that some broswers behave differently - I made a huge mistake in the past and stopped 90% of users being able to click links - simply because i only tested in one broser that allowed for my mistake in the code!
I agree with just about everyone else. This is a great tool. It is easy to asssume that all browsers operate the same, when in fact, they do NOT.
I thought that most of them were the same… but thanks for letting me know that they aren’t all the same.
With blogging, you still have a little safety net of the blog script that has been developed to run in different browsers, but when you build a website by yourself from scrap, you might see many differences between for example Firefox and IE. They handle the margins and the borders differently, which can really screw up your layout.
ALWAYS check your site in multiple browsers. Of course, you can’t check all of them, for which this tool is handy. But I find that over 80% of regular internet users use IE to browse the web and Firefox comes second with only a small percentage, while if you are in a webmasters/bloggers/SEO niche, you will find that 80% of your visitors will use Firefox.
Least you can do is check out your site in these two browsers.
Another thing is the size of the monitor. It can be really annoying when people need to scroll from left to right to read a simple article. If you have a design that has a fixed with, make sure that less important things are on the right hand side. And that the block of text is not wider than 600 px.
Great tool. Had a few problems with the layout of my site on firefox which I wasn’t aware of for several months until someone on a forum told me.
That’s a real handy site.
I am a web developer and this is always a problem for us. The more complicated you make a site, the more likely some people won’t be able to view it right.
Never really put to much thought into this issue thank you for bringing it up, gonna look into this with my blogs right now!
I also checked my blogs using browser shots. I find this very useful as I am not really good with this, and i can make use of tips such as this one.
Thank you for the work you have put into your nice blog. We will bookmark to your blog because it is very informational. We love the site and will come back to see your new posts.
From what I can tell me blogs look pretty good on most peoples browsers.
I installed seven browsers and I check my blog with all of them for compatibility issues.
That is a very helpful tool. I develop on the web a lot and it is useful to be able to check different browsers to make sure the site looks ok. Thanks!
browsershots is definitely enlightening. the problem comes when you discover that there ARE browsers that aren’t rendering your site well, because it’s not always obvious what is causing the problem. at that point you have to look at the numbers (of affected users) and figure out whether it is worth your effort to fix the problem.
I never considered this until one day I visited one of my websites while out of town visiting a friend. You are exactly right. Different browsers format in different ways. But I had no idea their was a tool to use like this one. Another tool to add to my arsenal!! Thanks so much
Phil
This is an excellent tool! It is very important to have your sites layout looking good to all your visitors. There is nothing thats going to turn your users away from your site than having a messy non browser friendly site/blog.
We check to make sure buttons work and things display correctly. I dislike looking at pages which are jumbled because of browser issues.
Nice find. I use any browser when i want to check site. I have to try the other site you listed above to see if it shows anything different. Most of the time i check firefox and explorer not to many time do i check linux or mac.