Is there any tool that allows you to automatically test page under different browser and make sure CSS looks good?
P.S. I know it sounds impossible, but maybe there are some solutions (like taking screenshots and comparing them)
https://browserlab.adobe.com/ - adobe id is needed, but it's free.
and
http://netrenderer.com - just for IE.
Both only take screenshots, but with a very little delay.
also for ie http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage - It's still in alpha state so it can only be trusted to a point.
Personally though, I pretty much have every browser in my comp so I can test things out in the actual browser. Plus all of the major ones do have web dev tools so.. if you can download all the browsers that's a good choice.
And I really just test all around functionality. For example if text is little different in some browsers then so be it, as long as it doesn't get cut or anything.
Tried BrowserStack? http://www.browserstack.com/
There was some other site I occasionally used to use that returned a set of images, but I can't remember what it was, and it wasn't always accurate.
You can use http://browsershots.org/ to create screenshots on all types of devices and browsers. This might be what you are looking for.
Related
I just noticed that the look of the form elements in Chrome has changed. I couldn't find any explanation with a quick search. Even the official Chrome's blog doesn't mention anything. I must say, the new look feels a bit foreign.
I would like to find out the reason behind the change. My guess would be that it has something to do with rendering speed. Is there the official benchmarks of the old look vs new look.
The speed might not be the reason. Does anyone know the official reason?
I didn't look into the official reason, but I noticed that checkbox elements are now vector graphics so they can scale/resize (like in the newer Internet Explorer).
The Chrome changelog probably has the answers you seek, but I'm guessing they wanted them with more consistent usability/presentation across platforms instead of using the OS' native look and feel.
I have been assigned the task of validating a website.
I searched the web and found this post of w3schools that
allows validating the HTML, CSS, XHTML, XML, WML of a website.
My question is, is that all the validation we need to do?
We want our website to be cross-browser and to work well on mobile phones.
Are there any better methods to validate our site?
Thank You.
First of all, w3schools is a terrible website; you'd be better off not using it for anything. For a markup validator, try this or this. Keep in mind that validation only ensures that your markup is syntactically, and to a certain extent, semantically correct, but does not ensure that it'll render or function how you intend across different browsers, for example. For that, you'll have to do testing yourself.
If all you've been told is that you need to "validate" the web site, then you've been given a really bad instruction, because it's nowhere near as complete as it needs to be.
Are you supposed to validate the HTML? Everything can be perfect in the HTML and CSS, and the site may still not work the same way in different browsers. A difference in interpretation of HTML/CSS is not necessarily an indication that something is "invalid".
Get better (or more precise) instructions if you can. Otherwise, make them up, deliver your result, and if it's not what was expected, charge normal consulting rates to do things again once you DO have more precise instructions.
If it's just HTML/CSS validation you're after, the validator at w3.org is the one you should be using. There are also validator add-ons for Firefox and Chrome.
If your goal is equivalent rendering in multiple browsers, the only solution is to test your site in the browsers that are important to you. Remember that different versions of a browser also count as different browsers.
Having a W3 valid structure/mark up doesn't mean, your website will look the same on every browser. There exist a lot of tools and plugins to emulate different resolutions or mobile device, but these often don't do a good job.
The only real way to find out, is to ask people to test it on their device.
I am learning how to program and my goal is to build a simple functional prototype...I'm at the very beginning.
I am not concerned with the visual design at this stage, other than as it relates to being able to demonstrate the functionality.
My question is: do I need to worry about ironing out cross-browser bugs in the HTML/CSS, or can I do development on a single browser? (Perhaps a better way of asking this is does the back-end programming have any effect on which browser is displaying it).
If you are at the very beginning and only want a functional prototype, do not worry about cross browser HTML/CSS. In fact forget the CSS altogether and focus on printing just standard HTML. Since the visual design will change, focus on the content, styles can always be applied and switched later.
If you need Javascript/AJAX stuff I would recommend using a library like JQuery that has already solved many cross browser problems for you.
The back-end stuff "Perl, PHP, Python, etc" shouldn't care about the browser as it is simply printing text for the browser to render as it will.
The back-end programming will affect the way a given browser displays your page and there might well be two schools of thought on whether you should be picky about the browser compatibility issues.
On the one hand, if you're just finding your feet in web development it might be asking too much to expect to have a standards-perfect, cross-browser site or application every time. It might be better to focus on actually accomplishing a finished result and learning as much syntax and technique as possible.
On the other hand, it might be argued that it's a good idea to get into the habit of adopting good practices now and recognising the sorts of things that are going to give you headaches... probably when you view your page in Internet Explorer. This takes more time to reach a finished product, but it would teach you good habits up-front.
Really it comes down to your own approach and preferences. Do you want to be detail-oriented and turn out a polished result in a longer period of time, or would you prefer to just get to the finish line and identify issues on a case-by-case basis?
Do car prototypes have a working stereo, leather upholstery, chrome rims, dice, and other random stuff which does not demonstrate the functionality of the newly-designed car?
My rule of thumb is that if it takes you more than 10 minutes to make it look acceptable to others (I'm completely fine with a disgusting design when prototyping), you're spending too much time on the aesthetics and less time on the actual clockwork.
What good does a "pretty-looking" site do if it has no functional layout?
This depends on both your audience and on your tooling. If you are trying to support all users on all browsers, then you will certainly need to do testing on those browsers (although actively developing on those browsers may not be necessary), whereas if you only need to support WebKit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari) or WebKit-based browsers and Firefox, that is less testing that you need to do.
It also depends on your tooling. For example, if you are writing directly in HTML and CSS, then you are much more likely to run into browser compatibility issues. However, if you use a tool such as GWT, which can generate browser-specific output automatically, there are fewer such issues to deal with.
Note that you can use Selenium (aka WebDriver), to automatically test your code on multiple different browsers, even if you only actively develop within a single browser environment. That way, you can know if you've broken something, but not have to constantly manually test in multiple browsers.
A design is a very important part of a web site. But making a layout cross browser compatible is very tough task.
What is the easiest way for this?
You may want to read about browser inconsistencies if you have a reason to be concerned. Other than that, I would not assume you have a problem unless you observe your pages being rendered differently across browsers. You should follow ANeves' advice and design in a browser other than IE and then test your pages as you develop.
You can use the tools located here in an article entitled "Cross-Browser Testing: A Detailed Review Of Tools And Services" to test that your pages in fact function correctly in different browsers.
The way I do it is by writing it and testing in Firefox, and each change I make I run it in IE. A lot of the times it will be different, but if you keep the changes small and isolate them then each one should be work-aroundable.
After it is completed, I check it in Safari and Chrome, and 99% of the time it's fine.
Also try to avoid tables if you can, learn to use CSS properly and it will save you a lot of time in the future.
I actually think it´s not that big of a problem. A very good starting point: CSS Mastery
Don't recrate the wheel. Try finding a website example that works in all browsers and check out it's code. It might help you out a lot.
For instance, if you want to develop just a layout (header, footer, sidebars, content, containers, menus and things like this)...I sincerely suggest you try different options available online.
For example:
http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/ultimate-3-column-holy-grail-pixels.htm
http://layouts.ironmyers.com/
You can find a lot of help for this online. That's only for a LAYOUT. I'm not sure about Visual Effects, I have to fight with each design every time I create a new one.
What works for me is to re-use the things that have worked for me in the past.
I'm looking for feedback on peoples experiences with developing sites that work across browsers. It seems to me there are at least two obvious ways to approach the task of making your site/webapp work across browser:
Constantly test across all supported browsers every step of the way; or
Pick a browser, get everything working in it as a reference implementation and then make all the other browsers match the reference implementation.
Each approach has an obvious drawback -- the problem with #1 is that you end up doing a lot of unnecessary work -- especially if you are developing a webapp that is going through a lot of iterations/prototyping/spikes etc. You will make a bunch of stuff work across browsers that will subsequently be discarded/removed.
The disadvantage to approach #2 is that while it makes the initial development much quicker and more painful it makes it much harder to figure out where some of the specific errors arose, especially for more complex issues -- whereas if you had been developing for all browsers at once you should catch it right away and know what change(s) introduced the problems.
A somewhat obvious third option would be a hybrid approach, but it seems to me that you would end up losing more by experiencing both of the problems with #1 and #2 than you would gain from the benefits of doing both.
What have you found to be the most effective way(s) to approach this challenge?
I’ve found that if you get too deep into developing a website without looking at other browsers you’ll quickly get to a place that is too much of a headache to debug. I consistently open my web pages in all the browsers I care about.
I strongly suggest you verify all browsers each time you make a large change to the site.
Make it work with all browsers up front. This will mean extra testing during development but will cause you less pain later. I find it's usually easier to diagnose problems if I've just developed the thing, rather than coming back later and trying to figure it out...along with a list of other issues.
It partly depends on whether you know it's going to have to work in all browsers up front. If you do, then you really are better off just making it cross-browser to begin with. You don't need to test that everything is 100% compliant every step of the way, but you should code toward that.
And really, it's not that hard, especially what with JS frameworks like jQuery and Dojo around that take care of the scutwork. If you find yourself continually battling one browser or another, you might want to reconsider your design, as you may have chosen to do things in a way that is inherently more difficult to do when cross-browser compatibility is important.
Well, you do #1, but you do it whilst greating a style guide. A litle bit like this: http://www.sitefromscratch.com/content/html-xhtml-css-testing.
So when designing a new site or design, you create a page containing the desired HTML for all the visual elements that will be used on your site. Ignore style for now, just use the HTML that makes the most sense.
Then you style it. Preferably, your style guide would be all on 1 page so it can be open in each browser you're supporting and all you need to do is hit refresh between changes, (avoid opting for several pages, because it will take you longer to inspect them all).
When you build your site, build from the style guide. If it's not in the style guide, add it and test it there first. If you discover a problem when building the site, (perhaps you didn't consider a particular element when it wrapped, for example), replicate and fix the problem in the style guide.
Here's the killer advantage: A new version of one of your supported browsers is released, what would you prefer to test, your entire site, or the style guide?
So that's the CSS taken care of, now you need to do that all over with your generic JS functions, if any.
I created an interface compatibility layer between the browser and my code - basically, I wrapped certain functionality and made the wrappers determine what javascript/html was needed.
As browsers change, you change this compatibility layer and you can leave the rest of your code alone.
If you have this layer in your architecture, the answer to your question becomes "whenever you want".
If you can get an enterprise lock-in then multiple browser support can become less of an issue, e.g. if your customers are all companies using Internet Explorer then why build the site to look good in Safari or Chrome?
If though you are making something for the general public then there is a hybrid approach I'd use which is that I use one browser to get all the functionality there and working and then test across browsers when I'm in that "pretifying" phase of the project. Initially the key is for it to work, then it has to look good.
I don't think I could see a logic to testing across all browsers as I initially fill out a form or do some other basic functionality as it could be a big productivity drain to test across at least a few browsers, e.g. IE 6 & 7, Firefox 2 and 3, Opera 9.5, Safari, and Chrome if one wants to get all the big boys, and at least a couple O/S as Safari on a Mac can be different than Safari on Windows, which is a lot of tests even for just one or two pages. On the other hand, near the end, this is when I can refactor my CSS and inline styling and make the code better for handing off for someone else to maintain, archive until a service pack project is planned, or keep some documents just in case something has to be done. Also, by waiting to clean things up, I can have more confidence in the final UI parts as these can evolve and change considerably over a short period of time.
I usually start out ensuring that all the HTML and controls that I write/use adhere to the specification.
Tools-->Options-->Text Editor-->HTML-->Validation-->Check Show Errors and choose your Target
This starts me out on a solid base. I functionally test new features in a single browser and then about once/twice a day test the full set of them across all browsers.
Using this approach, CSS and JS are the usual suspects when something isn't right, its rare that it's the actual HTML markup.
If you can do it right the first time. Do it then. It will probably never be right later.
Depends mostly on your experience, which could be applied to any programming activity including this one. If you know in advance what likely pitfalls you're going to have to avoid (eg. in cross-browser development, don't make it hard on yourself by trying to do something that is going to be a hassle in a different browser), then you can probably safely develop everything in one browser and then go in after it's done and tweak things to get it working everywhere.
I usually advise junior developers to keep all browsers open during development and to refresh each browser when making changes, but I myself tend to write everything with Firebug for support and then go back and see how it's doing in IE7 (etc) afterwards. Since I've been doing this for several years, most of the time I can predict what's going to be causing a headache and often immediately know where to look to fix it.
If you are new to Web Design/Development then getting things right in different browsers can be a chore at times.
However, it's really not that hard to get a website working in every major browser and coded towards the W3C standard. In my opinion EVERY designer/developer should do this out of principle, otherwise they are no better than they were in the IE years.
Develop cross-browser code, make sure it validates and never think about designing for one browser again.