

Ask HN: How do you check cross-browser compatibility of CSS/HTML? - sagacity

We do it the hard way, by hand, on about 15-18 browser/version/OS combinations.<p>I'm aware of a variety of stand-alone tools/web based services to facilitate this but with the exception of an occasional use of one or two, we haven't used these much.<p>My question here is how do you do this? What's your weapon of choice?<p>Please share what you can.
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thesash
In my experience the only reliable way to test compatibility is by doing it by
hand.

Addons like IE tab for firefox/chrome that simulate other browsers work
decently well, but have some shortcomings. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/ie-tab-2-ff-3...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
us/firefox/addon/ie-tab-2-ff-36/)

Compatibility testing often comes down to a compromise of picking the fewest
combinations that cover the highest percentage of your audience. We tend to
focus most of our time testing chrome for webkit (covers 99% of safari and
opera issues), firefox, and IE on mac and pc. This covers the vast majority of
our users, but we have to accept the fact that certain issues will slip
through on less widely adopted browsers. Also, dropping support for IE6 cut
our compatibility testing/fixing time dramatically.

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sagacity
Thanks for sharing.

> Also, dropping support for IE6 cut our compatibility testing/fixing time
> dramatically.

This is interesting. We've been thinking about this but haven't done much
research on IE6 usage statistics - are you saying it has generally dropped so
low that we can afford to stop testing with it?

------
damoncali
<https://browserlab.adobe.com/>

I used this a while back when it first came out and it wasn't totally reliable
(it failed to work with some IE6 png transparency hacks), but overall it was
pretty good. It may have gotten better since then as well.

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AjJi
I was using <http://spoon.net/browsers/> but not anymore, I'm still waiting
for updates about that, it was pretty good.

For now, I'm using IETester, buggy from time to time but gets the job done.

I'd advise you to test often while coding, this way you will avoid spaghetti
layouts and you will be able to know what's creating problems with IE to avoid
it in the future.

------
atgm
<http://www.browsershots.org>

~~~
sagacity
Yes, we do use (the free version of) this at times. _Painfully_ slow and
_tedious_ \- you've got to keep clicking the 'keep alive' (or whatever they
call it) button etc.

Have you (or others) tried their paid service? How good is that? Worth it or
not?

