Webdesign and Bad Browsers
September 15, 2007
One of the frustrations with Internet Explorer 6 (other than the fact that it’s a shitty browser) is that when designing websites, you have to continually check things in IE6 to make sure they’re not too messed up. I haven’t set it up so I can use Parallels on my MacBook yet, but before I was using Browsershots - they were okay but it takes awhile for them to process your request. However, a friend just told me about Netrenderer today. Although it just gives you a snapshot of the page (as opposed to Browsershorts, which gives you the image of the entire page), it is extremely quick and you get instant feedback on your design in IE 5.5/6/7 and offers overlay options so you can see the differences between IE6 and IE7. Currently 43% of my blog visitors are Internet Explorer users, and of that 43%, 20% use IE6; 23% use IE7 and hopefully that will continue to rise. Of course, I’d encourage everyone to make the switch to Firefox (currently 42% are Firefox users) or Safari (currently 12% are Safari users). Anyway - if you’re a designer who hasn’t installed Parallels yet, like me, enjoy Netrenderer.
Tags: browser-testing, Browsers, Firefox, Internet-Explorer, Safari, Web-Design
Posted in Design, Technology ShareThis
Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
September 15th, 2007 at 8:29 am
If you haven’t purchased Parallels yet I’d suggest taking a look at VirtualBox(http://virtualbox.org/). It does the same thing, and it’s free. I have Win2k and WinXP virtual machines on it that I use to test IE6 and IE7 and it works like a charm.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:06 am
thanks a lot for the link to Netrenderer – its wonderful for a quick look.