We always seem to leave browser testing till the end, open up Internet Explorer and within about 10 seconds of page load there’s a variety of swear words and we go off to hack our CSS or put in IE only style sheets. God help you if you go crazy and open up IE6, you’re sure to find some form of mess awaiting you.
Recently though my work habits have changed and I’ve decided to stop leaving it until the end, this has been prompted by a few things such as approaching the end of a project having not checked in IE7 and sending a colleague off to show the site to a client who, you guessed it uses IE7. (Sorry Andrew!)
Coupled with that I’ve started to develop sites in Google Chrome. I was impressed with Google Chrome when it first came out and apart from a few too many crashes with flash content it was pretty slick. However the lack of developer tools left me developing in Firefox and using two different browsers seemed a bit impractical.
Recently though I made the decision to switch to Chrome as my primary browser as Firefox has become, well a bit slow and I’ve also started to use more CSS3 which gets more support in webkit based browsers so I’ve been developing and building in Google Chrome.
Now I have of course lost access to all those lovely tools provided by the Firefox web developer toolbar as there doesn’t appear to be an alternative in Chrome yet, although I imagine it won’t be long until one is released.
So as my makeshift solution I’ve worked on the site in Chrome and had it open in Firefox and just pop in when I need to use some of the developer tools. OK having two browsers open all the time isn’t brilliant but it means as I’m working I’m constantly seeing the site in two different browsers and as soon as a problem arises I can sort it out. It also means I’m aware of the browsers all the time and prompt myself to have a quick check in IE every so often.
Generally I’m just keeping on top of cross browser issues, not having to rush in at the end and drag together browser specific style sheets or making changes that may have an effect on other areas of the site.
Whilst some won’t agree and keeping two browsers open isn’t ideal, it is certainly worth keeping tabs on how your development is going in more than one browser rather than one big headache of sorting it all out at the end.
Why am I browser testing last? During the Developpment, I work on a mac, and having to transfer all files to a PC is kinda annoying… But with some Experience, you won’t find such big differences between Firefox, Safari and IE… Only some small Problems you can fix in a short ammount of time…
Hi Alex, thanks for the comment.
Whilst it may not fit with everyone’s working practice to test in other browsers at an intermediate stage I think where it is possible it should be given consideration before the end of a project.
HI!
Is there any websites/applications that fixes bugs for IE or something?
Hi, I can’t think of any sties that will actually fix the problems for you but there are plenty of reference sites out there.
First stop I would head to the w3 and use the validator (http://validator.w3.org/) as valid HTML often doesn’t cause as much problems as invalid markup.
I personally find that a Google around for the problem is best but you can also ask specific questions on sites like http://doctype.com/. I also find a lot of problems between IE and other browsers are due to padding issues!
I’m on Mac and I develop in both Chrome and Firefox too. I do the main testing in Chrome, but when I come up to a bug I can’t fix at a glance, I open up Firefox and check what’s going wrong with Firebug.
+ I always test JS in Firefox, because of – yeah – Firebug.
…Is there a master list of A grade browsers???
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Chrome is my favorite browser. It is fast and cool-looking. Thanks for the article. 🙂
Great, practical advice for development. Thanks for sharing.
I always try to do my browser testing early, thanks for the great article.
I think that microsoft has been advancing a lot with the IE9. Although firefox still my favorite.
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Great information and it is very informative! I am using Firefox and I am quite happy with it.
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Why am I browser testing last? During the Developpment, I work on a mac, and having to transfer all files to a PC is kinda annoying
Are you not working somewhere hosted or only locally? Use something like adobe browserlabs if you’re not working locally.
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Why am I browser testing last? During the Developpment, I work on a mac,
And? You can’t open Firefox or Opera? Or nip into browserlabs every so often? Or even look at something on your mobile or in bootcamp or parallels?
nice post..You can’t open Firefox or Opera? Or nip into browserlabs every so often? Or even look at something on your mobile or in bootcamp or parallels?
I better prefer to browse through firefox than chrome. Although there are many add-ons for chrome, but I can not able to leave the habit of firefox browsing.
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