In a perfect world, you could peacefully write the code for your site, knowing that it will look consistently beautiful and work perfectly no matter what browser or browser version you are using.
Sadly, in the real world of changing and inconsistent CSS standards implementation by the various web browsers and browser versions, it doesn’t work that way, so your site that looks great in Safari looks broken in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, maybe a little off in Firefox 3.5, and we won’t even go there about the train wreck that happens in Internet Explorer 6.
Testing for this can be a challenge without the right tools, and setting up multiple machines or virtual machines with multiple installs of web browsers just makes you want take some aspirin and go lie down somewhere quiet.
Fortunately there are some useful tools out there to help. A favorite of mine for testing Internet Explorer is the IETester, which can be downloaded at www.my-debugbar.com. ETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.
Another great tool I found is at www.spoon.net This site allows you to run multiple web browsers and browser versions from the web, without having to install them. It looks like a nice tool for testing. Currently it offers the ability to test against multiple versions of Internet Explorer , Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.
And it’s free. Totally awesome.
