View your site in different browsers

Webmasters need to perform cross-platform and browser checks when they design their websites or make modifications to it to make sure that it displays just fine and without errors in all popular browsers at the very least.

But how can you do so? It is not really practicable to download all browsers and use all major operating systems as well. While possible with the help of virtual machines, it still means a lot of switching which takes up lots of time.

Without virtual machines, you are often left with installing one version of a browser but not the others on your system, which is not really helpful either.

Well, without the hassle of installing various browsers, you could just head over to the website Browsershots. Simply insert your URL into the form and select the browsers that you want to see your site rendered in. You can check almost 40 different browsers that run on the operating systems Windows and Linux. Most browsers are run on Linux and only Microsoft's Internet Explorer is run on Windows.

There are also some configuration options such as screen resolution, color depth, JavaScript and other setting you can enable if you want to check how your site looks with JavaScript disabled or with a screen resolution of 1600x1200. When you click the submit button, your requests will be added to the queue. It will take a while before your screenshots will be uploaded, depending on your settings.

At this point, it is wise to either bookmark the page or leave it open and refresh it later to view the screenshots that are created once the queue is processed. It can take up to some hours depending on the queue and the settings that you have selected.

Update: Browsershots appears to be no longer available. An alternative that you can use is browserling, a related service.

Just enter the web address you want to test and select the browser versions you want the web application to use. Note that some versions are only available if you upgrade to a paid plan. A second free alternative is Saucelabs. If you do not mind paying for a service, try BrowserStack instead.

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