Tip - Make Sure your site works on every browser!

If you have ever designed a website, or perhaps your planning to create one, one of the biggest challenges is trying to create a site that not only looks good, but looks good to everyone! A challenge that faces many web developers is trying to make a website that will always look and work correctly no matter what browser the visitor is using.

The Worldwide Web Committee set out standards that web developers and browser developers “Should” use in order to create a standard right across multiple platforms. Sadly some browsers, mentioning no names, cough, I, cough E, cough (sorry i’ve got a cold) fail or have failed in the past to adopt these clear standards or have only partially adopted them.

Now this can cause problems for web developers who make a website that works perfectly on one web browser but broken on another. Some browsers require designers to use specific code within their HTML / CSS in order to do exactly what another browser is doing but without this code!

What all designers therefore must do is test to see that their website looks and performs just the same in multiple browsers. Often web developers have lots of browsers installed on their computers to do this and compatibility with the most common browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Firefox is a must in order for a website to succeed.

Ok, so that’s enough waffle, what is my point? Well Browser Shots! What? Browser Shots is a great little website I came across when designing a website as part of my University course. What the website does is allows you to enter any URL and select lots of different browsers across multiple platforms with more being added all the time. Not only that but you can select versions of browsers, like IE 6 cough awful cough IE7, IE8, Safari 3, 4, Chrome, Firefox, 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.5 etc etc. Also there is loads of less known browsers you can select.

So what does this actually do? Well after entering the URL selecting what browser you want to check and clicking submit the site will go a take a full page screenshot of your webpage on all those browsers you selected! It does take a while but it’s great if you are unsure whether an older browser will work with the stuff on your site!

Cloud Bite of a few of the available broswers

As it does take a while some may time out but you can extend your time period if you wish and also check different browser sizes if needed. I keep forgetting not everyone has 24” monitors

Overall Browser Shots is a great website that is useful to all those web designers out their, go on give your website a go!

Website: BrowserShots.org

Travel Back in time with the WayBack Machine

Have you ever wondered what a site used to look like years ago? Wondered what sites like Microsoft, Apple, BBC all looked like when they were first created? Well your in luck! I have come across a great way you can see this! It’s called the “Wayback Machine”! No, this isn’t something from Doctor Who and don’t worry you wont have to travel at the speed of light to go back in time either.

The WayBack Machine is located over at the Internet Archive Pages (archive.org) and allows you to enter any web address that is over 6 months old and it will have a go at showing you what It used to look like!

Below is an example and for it I have chosen the BBC.co.uk webpage!

Step 1: Enter a URL

The First thing you need to do is head to the archive webpage. Then enter a URL of your choosing! Simple eh? Next go on click that Take Me Back button. Don’t worry nothing will happen to you. You wont end up back when the Internet began! (Would be good though buying google.com, twitter etc )

Step 2: Select a date.

Ok, so Step 2 will show you a list of dates. Now depending on the age of the website this could be anything from a couple to a couple of hundred. Usually there is a different grab of the page for each time it was updated and this is indicated with a little * (asterisk). Click one and you will go back in time to see the result. If you get an error hit the back button and try another page!

Step 3: See the old days of the web! (BBC July 1998)

After selecting a date you can see what the website looked like. Best of all these aren’t images, they are fully interactive so feel free to click the links!

That’s it all done! Why not try out Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Google, Yahoo. You could even try out Alton Towers Magic, which for those who do not know or remember, I was the owner of along with my mate. Don’t pick on the design it was my first site and was far more successful than Cloud Bite

If you Find any sites worth a look at please link to them below!

Link: WayBack Machine

So why would you use this instead of just loading the browser? Well firstly its really quick double click and your striaght to where you want to go. Secondly if you wanted to restrict a users access to websites however require access for certain applications like g-mail, using prism you could just remove access to the computers web browsers and just use Prism therefore restricting access to that web app that you want the users to use.

You can download Prism from Here

What are your thoughts on Prism? Is it useful for you and what is its potential? Looking forward to hearing your comments…