BrowserLab

The web is wonderful but coding for different browsers and operating systems is a major pain. There are many testing tools that will help a developer test their code in a variety of scenario’s or you could use VMWare to boot into various O/S and browser combinations. BrowserLab from Adobe is a free (with paid for options) tool that will help test your website without having to reboot or launch and O/S.

You can load up any website and test it from within your current browser. The current browser and O/S combinations are as follows:

• Firefox 2.0 – Windows XP
• Firefox 3.0 – Windows XP
• Internet Explorer 6.0 – Windows XP
• Internet Explorer 7.0 – Windows XP
• Safari 3.0 – Macintosh OS X
• Firefox 2.0 – Macintosh OS X
• Firefox 3.0 – Macintosh OS X

Not a massive list but helpful all the same. You can compare a website side by side or use the onion skin option to overlay two versions of the test site. If your a Dreamweaver user you can also download an extension and run Browserlab directly from the app.

This is a really nice tool for a developer but it will ultimately become a paid for option. It will remain free until the end of 2010 but Adobe will then start to apply a monthly charge while extending the functionality. If they increase the browser support and O/S options (no Linux?) then it could be very powerful indeed.