You’d think that by now, after 17 years of graphical Web browsers, that standards would define and ensure consistent Web content rendering on pretty much all devices or, at least, on PCs. Should you think this you would be wrong. In fact, nothing could be further from the case. Web applications developers still have to not only worry about differences in how current browsers display content but also have to cater for the still significant population of previous browser versions.
I just did a quick survey of a few leading browser statistics sites and here’s what they concluded for May this year:
These are gross shares for each product family and so include older versions some of which are declining rapidly in popularity
What is interesting that each service has its own take on the distribution of share with NetMarketShare being very much at odds with the others. One thing is clear when you dig deeper over the previous months: Internet Explorer’s share is decreasing while Firefox and Chrome are both gaining ground. This is a good thing considering that IE is the most problematic of browsers when it comes to standards support and therefore rendering results.
From the viewpoint of Web application designers this overall market fragmentation means that checking rendering accuracy is really important but how many of us have the resources on hand to test for more than a few browser versions? The answer to this problem is to use a testing service such as Browser Shots.
Browser Shots is a neat idea: You submit a URL and select which of the 74 browser versions currently supported (covering Windows, Linux, OS X, and BSD) you want to have tested. The service queues your request and your results appear as they become available; you can see the latest results by refreshing your browser window or you can reload a URL they give you for that specific test. A refresh timeout window of 30 minutes applies after which your results are deleted.
When you set up testing, you can also specify what screen size and color depth to test; whether Java, JavaScript and Flash should be enabled; and, for JavaScript and Flash, which version to use.
One issue that may concern some people is that there is no privacy as recent results are displayed on a public page.
The service is free (donations are requested) or, if you have some spare resources, you can sign up to become a “screenshot factory” and run tests — as of writing some 101 computers were involved.
For $29.95 per month you can subscribe for “Priority Processing,” which provides immediate processing as often as you want and there is no timeout involved and no ads displayed. Also, for people who would prefer to keep their results private, the for-fee option ensures privacy.
