I’ve designed several web sites using XHTML and CSS lately, and I’ve done my best to make them cross-browser compatible, lean, usable, and accessible. I have also tried to test them in as wide a variety of different environments as possible to ensure that they work correctly for the largest possible audience.

The biggest question is, to what lengths do you have to go to test your site?

My PC has three different browsers on it (Firefox, Opera, and IE 6) for testing. There are a few more that I could probably load onto my machine (Netscape, etc.), but I haven’t really felt like it—that’s a lot of browsers on one machine.

As for Linux systems, I have a friend who has tested a few sites for me using different builds of Mozilla. I haven’t noticed any important differences in how my sites render in Mozilla compared to Firefox (same basic code), so I have been pestering him less frequently lately.

Mac and IE7

The biggest testing challenges I have are for Macs and IE7. I don’t own a Mac, and I don’t plan on spending any amount of my few dollars on buying one. I also don’t feel like replacing my IE6 with a beta version of IE7 or messing around with a non-standard installation. How on earth do I test these two environments?

Dan Vine to the Rescue

For those who don’t have access to a Mac or an installation of IE7, Dan Vine has come to our rescue with two great services—iCapture and ieCapture. iCapture is a server that will take a snapshot of your site using Safari running on MacOS X, and ieCapture will take a screenshot of your site using IE7 Beta 2.

Since most web site design problems manifest themselves (very!) visually, these screenshots allow you to see how your site works on a Mac and in IE7.

“Let’s Discuss Your Coverages”

Just like insurance, we’re playing a probability game here. We need to make our web sites compatible in enough browsers to cover the majority of web users, but there’s a point at which adding compatibility for more obscure users just isn’t worth the expense.

My testing covers Firefox (and thereby Mozilla), Opera 8, IE 6, IE 7, and Safari. According to the W3C Schools Browser Stats, this covers about 90% of all Internet users. I know that I could test a little more thoroughly, but the testing may not be worth the extra effort, especially since the majority of browsers I left out are pretty standards-compliant.

One Glaring Omission

There is one glaring omission that I have made—I don’t test IE 5 anything. Is there a way to do this that is somewhat easy? Some service? I may have to break down and buy an old machine to put IE 5.5 on so I can see how things look. Of course, IE 5 is disappearing, and my standards-compliant, low to no-hack code should work for most other current and future browsers.

What testing (if any!) do you do on your web sites? What tools are your favorite for ensuring your site works for the largest possible audience?