Whatever your chosen browser, one key to success is to make sure you are writing HTML correctly.
There are a number of online resources that check your web site for various quality issues, including the browser compatibility (or HTML Specification compliance) of your HTML code. There are also HTML validators that check your code for errors.
All will do a certain number of tests for free; however, to get the really good stuff, you generally have to pay for the individual service or a year’s subscription for full access to the site. For example, WebSiteGarage provides a nifty (and fee-based) feature called “Browser Snapshot” that will provide up to 18 screenshots of your page on a variety of browsers, including all past versions. This can be a good way to run tests if you don’t have access to all of these browsers on your own.
Some of the more popular HTML validation services include:
If these don’t suit you, there are a large number of HTML validators listed on Yahoo.
Browser compatibility databases and HTML validators are beginning to work their way into HTML authoring tools as well. GoLive Cyberstudio (Mac-only; see http://www.golive.com/ ) provides a complete database of all the HTML tags and their browser-support information.
Even more useful is Macromedia Dreamweaver’s “Check Target Browsers” feature. Authors specify which browsers they are targeting with their site design (Netscape 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0; and Internet Explorer 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0) and Dreamweaver runs a check to see if any tags or attributes in the document are not supported by the target browser(s). For more information on Dreamweaver, see http://www.macromedia.com/.
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