Weird positioning in certain browsers - html

I'll try to be short and clean. I did website for friend, although she says some people complain about pink quote field to cover the text area, I've tried this on different PCs, browsers but haven't seen this kind of issue. So I was thinking maybe that old IE or something?
Here's websites link: http://www.zlobekbambino.pl
Thanks in advance

I would try using a service such as Adobe's Browser Lab or Browser Shots to test the site in various browsers to see which is causing problems. You can then try to work out how to fix it.

Assuming you have a Windows PC, you can test with all versions of IE by installing IETester. It's a very usefull program that allows you to run all versions of IE in tabs in the same window.
Obviously though, it only works on a Windows PC, so if you're on a Mac you won't be able to use it. In that case, http://www.browsershots.org allows you to download screenshots from virtually any browser ever released. The downside of that is that you only get a static screenshot, so not much use for testing dynamic content, but still a useful tool.

Related

How to test website on other browsers and fix issues

I have just completed a new Shopify website and used mainly Mozilla Firefox to put this together. I have been told by the client that the site doesn't show up properly in Chrome and Safari but when I have checked this on my 13" laptop they both appear fine on there and I was just wondering if anyone can give me any tips on how I can ensure that the site is working on all common browsers without having any issues.
Would appreciate any tips as I know there are paid websites to do this but just wondering if there is anything else that I can do to get this fixed.
If you to the safari developers "dropdown" in the status bar the is an option called "User agent" (the second one) from there you can "change" the browser.
Disclaimer: never actually used this function.
I believe that the best way to handle this would be to download and install all browsers to test.
There is a free service from the Microsoft dev site that gives you screenshots from a couple of different browsers and versions. Here is the link -> https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/screenshots/
It's not as good as installing all browsers to fully test everything but it can give you a rough idea if there's something wrong with css or something like that.
Your issue might be related to different browser versions. Double check to make sure that you are on the same version to see if you can reproduce the issue.

Is the website rendering OS dependent?

I'm developing a very simple web site, with only one web page, but i need the one single page to look as it should in all the browsers. Now, for testing purposes, i have installed a bunch of web browsers on my windows 7 machine (FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Netscape etc.) and after doing some markup changes, i've got the same looking webpage on all the browsers.
Now the question is, does "the way" a browser renders a web-page depend on the operating system the browser is running on? Should I install linux (or other os) and test again or it will just be fine?
You should definitely be testing sites cross-platform, others may disagree, but the rendering is definitely different.
In addition to base-rendering, you may also be missing fonts, have alternate fonts with the same name, have anti-aliasing enabled/disabled on different platforms/configurations and much more.
To see exactly what I mean, on a base install of Windows 7 with Firefox 5, OSX with Firefox 5 and Linux with Firefox 5, when using the font 'Arial' or 'Verdana', you will clearly see the differences, even if those fonts do exist on all platforms.
On top of the differences you'd see above, even your positioning could be out if you're using non-absolute values (hell, even if you are using absolute values such as px it could be out!), so it's always best practice to check your sites cross-platform, it's as important as checking cross-browser, in my opinion.
Even if the same fonts exist on different OS they might look different.
So yes if you want to be sure that the page look satisfactional on the OS you should test..
As rudi_visser said, you should be doing cross-platform testing. It's a bit of a bother, but absolutely worth it.
You can start by using a service like browsershots.org to quickly check if your site looks ok. To check older versions of IE, Microsoft provides some virtual machine images you can run in Virtual PC to really test the sites. Alternatively, there's this site which is like browsershots.org, only faster and IE-only. Please note, that screenshot services are no substitute for actually testing the site on a certain platform/browser, but it's a quick way to see if something's working at all.
I would definitely recommend checking your site in the older versions of IE, since IE has a rich history of, well, not working quite right. IE9 (which I assume you're using) is a big improvement, but a lot of people are still on versions 6-8. Since IE6 was around for ~9 years without major changes, IE 7, 8 & 9 have each had a lot of catching-up to do, so they're all very different.
As for other browsers, their rendering is more consistent across versions, but they may not be consistent across platforms. Again as rudi_visser said, elements might shift around, and especially text can look different. For instance, Mac OS X uses a different font-smoothing technique from Windows, so a line of text may appear longer/shorter, bolder/lighter from one to the other. A cross-platform browser like Firefox will use the OS' font-rendering, so even though the browser's the same on the different platforms, it can still look different. (The exception is Safari on Windows, which, I think, insists on using Mac-like font-smoothing instead of Windows' own).

Alternative to IETester

I was wondering if anyone knew of any alternatives to IE Tester. I am getting some differences between my actual XP IE6 vm and my IETester. So I am looking for something that is a little more accurate than IETester.
Unfortunately the options are somewhat limited.
You can use VMWare with a Windows XP (or lower) install to test IE6
You can use VirtualPC (free) with a (free) XP/IE6 image from Microsoft
You used to be able to use Spoon.net to run just the browser via a plugin in Firefox/whatever
You can try MultipleIE's but IE6 will break and not work if IE8 is installed locally
Or if you are really lucky, you can DROP IE6 support!
I use expression super preview. It's good for layout bugs, but unfortunately it is useless for script testing
If you just have the one page you can use Browser Shots for free or sign up for a small fee. They have been very good in the past when I have experienced the same issues with IE Tester not being 100% correct mainly with JavaScript problems.

What is the best service for cross-browser screen shots?

I have a website that I'd like to monitor for display problems in various browsers (mainly Internet Explorer.) I know that browsercam.com and broswershots.org provide this as a service. Could anyone recommend the best way/service to do this?
I have used browsershots.org. Internet Explorer is very populair and there are long waiting lists for IE versions. Most of the time you will not see your screenshot before your 30 minutes will expire.
You can try www.litmussapp.com. They have software which checks css.
oeps typo: it should be www.litmusapp.com
I like Adobe Browserlab, even though it's annoying that you have to create an Adobe ID to use it.
Theres also Microsoft SuperPreview and our new service, Browsera. One issue we faced with browsershots is that it scrolls the window to collect the screenshot, resulting in abberations if you have fixed positioned elements, or background images that don't scroll.
I like to use the Total Validator Pro Desktop Tool and do everything in one big shot. Validation, WCAG, Screen shots, etc. The online version lets you do one screenshot at a time.
As most options in this question are no longer around I would like to suggest the cross browser testing solution BrowseEmAll which can be used for testing (especially IE) desktop and mobile browsers.

Is anyone targeting Google Chrome yet? (Web apps, plugins)

Is anyone writing applications specifically to take advantage of google chrome?
Are there any enterprise users who are considering using it as the standard browser?
Yes, I have started to pay very good attention to Google Chrome for my applications. Recent analytics show that between 6%-15% of my users are accessing my applications (varies between 6 to 15 in different applications) on Chrome. And, this number looks on an upward trend.
Thus, I can't really ignore it for testing right now.
As far as taking it as a standard goes, thats a long way off. I still have to test for IE6! :( Though, we have been planning to start using features like Gears (inbuilt in Chrome - downloadable elsewhere) once Chrome crosses the 25% mark. Thats when I believe that we will be looking at Chrome to be our preferred browser. I hope that we have Chrome 1.0+ by then! ;)
I switched to Chrome and haven't looked back except for the occasional site which doesn't work properly, forcing me to load it in Firefox. All my existing web applications work fine on it, and I'm using it for primary testing on my current development project.
I'm not actually targeting chrome, but I have added chrome to my browsers to test sites on. I've found some odd quirks in this product where some plugins cause the browser to hang, or run really slow in some environments, but they are still in beta in active development. But I definately now make sure sites I work on render well in chrome, as well as firefox, latest versions of IE, safari, Konquerer and opera. I usually check out how it looks on lynx as well, that helps me catch "un-alternated text" in images. Yeah, I know that isn't a word, but some people will understand what I'm saying.
Because chrome uses the webkit to render HTML, you can be assured if it works in safari, it'll work under chrome, however it's rendering engine isn't up to scratch quite yet. I think writing applications that take advantage of it is similar to writing iPhone applications, remember chrome is expected to be adopted by android to make it similar to iPhone. That way it pretty much takes advantage of all those iPhone apps.
Would I install it as the browser of choice? not yet - but i'll certainly work on valid web pages that will render across all browsers.
One of our major customers has outlawed Chrome because it installs on the C drive without asking. They deploy a standard image with a small C drive and large D drive so they can easily re-clone the system part of the image on C without destroying the client's personal files on D. Most software allows you to choose the install directory. Anything that violates this is disallowed, and they're a big enough company to have some weight with most vendors.
We have enough headaches trying to support
Firefox
Two versions of IE which have their own iffy bugs
Safari
I'm not sure why we continue to support Safari. Most of our users (corporate) use IE6 or IE7. We try to make sure that things work in both of those.
Maybe not for programming purposes but Chrome w/ Google Reader makes for the most powerful RSS reader. Can handle up to 1500 feeds w/ performance still ok, managing subscriptions still functioning.
I'm using it on my work machine, but that's about it. It's been stable for me, and I like the barebones UI. I'll still switch to Firefox for the web developer extensions however.
I'm liking some of GoogleChrome- the Start page with your 9 most recent is the winner for me. The interface takes a little getting used to, but the speed is impressive, especially with Gmail.
However, it glitches with Java, which rules it out for serious work at the moment. I use FireFox mostly and have Chrome for the "other" websites at work.
I'm considering using GWT on an intranet project and considering suggesting to the users that use Chrome to take advantage of the enhanced Javascript performance. Any AJAX-heavy app would be a great candidate to target Chrome.
At my company, we're not targeting it, but we're definitely paying attention to it. My boss is using it as his primary browser, and I have implemented browser detection for it in our scripts in case we ever to need to target it for some reason.
Chrome has the .png opacity bug where the transparent parts of the .png are a solid color if you try to transition the opacity from 0 to 1. In IE7 the opaque parts are black, and in Chrome, they are white. Today, I decided to go ahead and account for this bug in my JavaScript. I don't really test sites on Chrome that often, but I am actually using it for almost all of my browsing.
I will target Chrome as soon as a stable Linux and OSX client is available.
Targeting Chrome/Chromium right now, I think is like targeting Konqueror web browser. It will get popular, but you should wait to a more stable beta, and/or some Linux and OS X client.
My website statistics shows 3.xx % visitors using Chrome which arrived just few weeks back. And Opera is only 4.xx % which has been around for several years.
Easily you can see that rate at which Chrome is picking up.
You can see how easily Google takes over all areas of your computing world and personal world too.
Since Chrome uses Webkit, it has the same rendering engine and DOM support as Safari (not necessarily the same revision of Webkit though). By testing in Safari, you can generally get by without worrying about Chrome. Any differences you find are probably just bugs that you should file on instead of work around.
However, because Chrome uses a different JS engine, there may be a few incompatibilities with Safari. So, if you're doing anything with JS, you might as well fire up Chrome and see if there's anything obviously wrong.
Generally though, you don't target browsers, you target rendering engines (with their associated DOM support and JS engines).
I am using Google Chrome, so far all the web apps I have work fine in it with no modifications.
No.
Why help Google further build an evil empire? In this particular case it is so obvious that they do not care about users but only obsessed with gathering usage info.
It's not any major player yet