Alright, so you have done a very nice looking blog/website and ready to rock and roll. You would like to test how is your newly created web look in different browsers, or even in different operating systems. Chances are you only have one or two browsers in your Windows, and it will be very rare if you have two or three different operating systems in your PC. But you doesn’t want your new website looks broken in any computer, so what can you do? Manually install every single browsers available in the market seems to be a working solution, but you only able to test it in one or two operating systems. How about Linux? Or Mac OSX? It’s totally a headache job to do, and probably if you outsource such a project, it will cost you something.

But fear not. There is free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl, the browsershots, which makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers, and if you missed the word, it’s FREE! So how to use it? Simple. Make your own website online and running (obviously this is needed), but if you just want to try out, you can use any website, including my blog. Go to browsershots, enter the URL in the blank space available for you, and you can start the process by pressing ‘submit’ button. You might want to check the screenshot below if you haven’t go to the site.

As you can see, there are numerous options for you to customize your browser screenshots; different operating systems, different browsers and versions, screen size, color depth, javascript, java and flash. They have already picked most of the famous browsers to test your website, but if you want to make it a zero missed, you are always welcome to tick all the options available. Once you have clicked ‘submit’, it will let you know approximately how long it going to take before showing you all the screenshots it manage to get. Please be reminded that there are chances that your requested browser shot (rare one) is not available, or failed to load (free service anyway), but most likely there will be no problem for most of the famous browsers. One feature I liked is that if you requested browser shots before, it will list all the information of your previous request for your own reference.

Above shown the result page that will slowly shows all your requested screenshots, and you are not required to refresh the page for them to display (push loading from their server automatically). You have an option to extend the expiry time as well, if you want to make a more complete archive of screenshots. At the time of testing, only 18 browsers in Windows are having screenshots of my blog, the rest in Linux and BSD are all unavailable. I am not sure why, perhaps there is some maintenance or problem, or probably limitation of my chosen settings. Nevertheless, this website is very useful if you want to check out how your own website looks on the other browsers, and other operating systems.

Editor’s Note

If you looking for a solution for such purpose, browsershots can be one of the options available, and it’s not going to cost you a single cent. All thanks to Johann C. Rocholl for creating such a handy website for us.

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