Cross browser testing is always daunting task for new web designer, it will not be such an easy task even for experienced ones . But its a necessity if you want your website didn’t lose any potential customer. So here i round up some of the tool thats available to help you go to sleep.

IE ( internet explorer ) Testers

Lets nail the devils first. If you can code and following the standards, most likely you’ll get you web/web-app runs smoothly on all major browser. But, maybe not IE. IE 6 ( specially ) and its brothers has been known as a giant trouble maker for web designers, because of their weird behaviors and rebellion to web standards. Lots of designer just refuses to support them. But if you think like me, designers supposed to create solutions, and considering the statistic of IE users, i’d say IE compatibility is necessity ( although lets just settle with gracefully degradation if you find it too difficult ).

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Here’s the tool that have been saving me from losing my hair a lot : Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar , Install it and run from your IE to see what really happening so you could check why they had that psychological disorder on rendering pages. Download it here for free » .

Internet Explorer Tester from DebugBar

This is the alternative on testing pages with IE, it can check from IE5.5 through its recent IE’s. Download it here for free »

IE Renderer

Another IE tester, they claim that they are able to process a large number of capturing jobs in parallel and in realtime, making it the fastest service. Try it here »

Browser Capture Online Service

BrowserShots

Browsershots.org is a free browser captures online tool. It support a lot of popular browsers on different os/platform ( Windows, Mac, BSD, Linux ). It works like this : When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to browsershots.org .Start your webshots by entering its url here »

Browser Cam

Unlike browsershot, browser cam isn’t come for free. You’ll need to pay for it if your serious about what your doing. I like this more rather than browsershot, because it then saves your screencapture on your folder, so you could arrange and mange them better. Also you’d have better capturing project management better with browsercam. They also had different platform capture, such Email testing, and Mobile Test ( Iphone, Android, Windows Mobile). The paid service also support remote access, for live testing ( to check JavaScript , behaviors, etc )
Even if its not free but they have free trial for 200 screen caps / 24 hours. Why don’t you give it a shot »

Cross Browser Testing

Alternative paid browser capture service, they also support live testing, and have free trial. Haven’t check them out tho. Click here to go to their website »

BrowsrCamp

Its an online tool to check how your web look on Mac browsers. They provide free service and paid ones. Try it here »

Local / Offline Testing on your Desktop

Portable Browsers

If you don’t want to clutter your computer ( esp. PC user ) with browser that you’d rarely used, goes with portable browsers for browser testing. However, if you’re a serious web designer, i would recommend that u actually install at least major browser on your computer. Because cross browser testing isn’t a rare activity anymore if you’re a pro web designer. Some of the portable browser you could get for free is :

• Browser from portable apps »( Firefox, Chrome, Seamonkey)
• Opera USB – Portable
• Spoon Browser Sanbox, ( Microsoft Internet Explorer (6,7,8), Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Opera)

Cross browser testing software

There’s two software that i know for this :

• Adobe’s Browser Lab
• BrowserSeal

But i haven’t tried them, since when there’s the free ones why need to pay ?

Me ?

I have several browser installed and updated regularly ( most of them on automatic updates ) to check how things work on other browser. Most of the time i’m using Blueprint or 960 css frameworks so cross browser bugs is minimized.
For layouts (XHTML, CSS ) : usually i code on Firefox ( with Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug enabled ). After that i just need to check with IE ( with Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar on ), and make some adjustment and if couldn’t afford it i’d settle with degrading a bit or some IE Hacks ( while patting my self, its okay to do this as necessity for the poor IE users ).
And just check them out on BrowserCam. 9 out of 10 it works ok.

For Javascript it’ll be harder than that, so i prefer to go with jQuery

So what your favorite tools and best practices on cross browser compatibility ?
please do share here