Comments on: Easier Cross-Browser Testing

By: snipe

snipe — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:41:02 +0000

The benefit is that you have 25 or so different combinations of browsers and OS's. I run VMware to check modern Windows browsers, but if I want to check older versions of IE, Firefox, etc, it's not practical to use only VMware. Lots of our clents still run IE6.

By: Bird

Bird — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:14:40 +0000

I looked at crossbrowsertesting.com, but in price comparison, I can't see the benefit. I can either install VMWare/Parallels for $80 and use that for the next two years, or I can pay $19/month over two years ($456) for crossbrowsertesting.com....

By: Vasya

Vasya — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:25:33 +0000

You may want to take a look at this new fast cross browser screenshot service Currently it only supports Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on Windows, but as it is being actively developed more features and additional browsers will be added in the future.

By: Digital Templates

Digital Templates — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:36:43 +0000

Thanks for sharing this excellent resource (BrowserShots.Org). It sure can be useful for my programmers.

By: Ken Hamric

Ken Hamric — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:30:06 +0000

Thanks for the mention and positive comment for CrossBrowserTesting!
Much appreciated!
Ken (one of the 3 founders)

p.s. The link to the ‘huge list of available OS and browser combinations’ is pointing to the wrong place – I believe it should be http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/configurations.php

By: james mason

james mason — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:25:05 +0000

great post, just tested my site. Works well in all apart from ie.6. No surprises there !

By: snipe

snipe — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:42:54 +0000

Excellent info – thanks Chris! I didn’t know about the teams options – very cool!

By: Chris Jester-Young

Chris Jester-Young — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:41:04 +0000

That’s true, I understand that setting up lots of virtual machines is not a solution for everyone. If you have a fast enough Internet connection to the virtual terminal service providers, then that is a very workable solution indeed, I agree. (Do they have any service guarantees about how many other users will also be using their server concurrently? One user’s load may affect another user’s testing performance.)

Here in New Zealand, Internet speeds are really slow and laggy, so it’s unfortunately not a viable option. But once we move to the US, I look forward to having more options in this regard!

By: Chris Jester-Young

Chris Jester-Young — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:36:48 +0000

I forgot to mention one other thing, which is that if you’re willing to fork out some money on a virtualisation solution, VMware Workstation has a “teams” feature where you can set up all your testing virtual machines within the same LAN segment. There are two purposes to this:

1. You can set up the LAN segment to have latency built in (i.e., the LAN segment can be set up to slow down connections to, say, dialup speed, and/or drop x% of packets, to simulate real-life Internet connections). You can then really tell if there is some image or script that needs to be shrunk/minified.

This assumes (as 2b below) that pages are served from a web server on the LAN segment, rather than being local files on the testing machines.

2a. You can set up the LAN segment not to have any direct Internet access, which will give you an idea of whether you’re unintentionally linking some image/stylesheet/whatever from an external site. So it’s a really quick way to find broken internal links, etc.

2b. On a related note, you will very quickly catch all the broken src=”C:\Documents and Settings\…” references (which seems to be a problem with some sites, unfortunately), especially if your virtual machine does not replicate the same folder structure as the web design machines.

I hope this helps readers here.

I will finish by saying that I’ve been a paying customer of VMware Workstation for nearly 5 years, and I’m very satisfied with the product. I have no affiliation with VMware, and am not employed by them, nor do I have any personal benefit from promoting the product, so this is just my plain honest opinion.

By: snipe

snipe — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:30:32 +0000

Hi Chris – your setup sounds great for an individual developer on a Mac – but if you’re on a PC, or if you work in an office where several people are going to be testing, setting up that many instances can be more trouble than it’s worth. Other than whatever lag-time the VNC/Remote Desktop client may cause, you get an entirely accurate picture using the virtual terminals – they’re basically the same thing you’re describing that you have, without the hassle of setting up 20 different virtual machines. For me, the virtual terminal services are a way better way to go. I have space on my laptop, but I do some video editing on it as well, so I don’t always have that much space to spare – plus I’d rather login to a service, do what I need to do and logout and be done with it, rather than having all that extra crap sitting on my hard drive

That said, its awesome that you’ve got a system that works for you. And you know I always appreciate your feedback