A common mistake when browser testing
As part of any website build process, the layout design and functionality will require cross browser testing. To what degree of testing is required and which browsers your website needs to support is subjective to the purpose and your target audience, but that is a discussion for another day.
There are many tools currently available which designers and developers have become reliant upon to view their design in multiple browsers quickly and with minimal effort. Web applications such as Adobe BrowserLab, Litmus and BrowserShots all offer services where you can view static images of your website in multiple browsers.
Whilst using these apps are convenient for not having to have multiple browsers installed on your development computer, I am a firm believer that these tools only touch the surface. A screenshot only provides a quick glance at your work and cannot highlight any other problems such as unclickable links, JavaScript errors etc.
In the long run, it always proves invaluable to start up your website in different browsers. You may be surprised at what can be found by just trying to use the website as any other user would.
Below is a screen shot of benmacgowan.co.uk in Internet Explorer 6 (code altered for this example). By just looking at the screen shot, you would assume that the design works fine for the user, but what isn’t shown is that the links in the footer are unclickable for the user, causing increased frustration and a loss of user experience.
