Testing webpages on multiple platforms

January 18, 2013 5:52 AM

Is there a tool that I can use to test my website's various pages across multiple platforms (different mobile devices, different browsers etc) without having to, you know, manually get hold of each mobile device and open up each browser and test it?

I was hoping to find a program or an app that would enable me to point it at a particular page and it would then show me how it appears on each different platform so I can get to work fixing the bugs...

posted by HopStopDon'tShop to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: Don't know about mobile platforms, but different browsers can be accomplished at: http://browsershots.org
posted by andorphin at 5:54 AM on January 18, 2013

Best answer: I recommend BrowserStack. It's a pay service, but affordable. It will give you the ability to test on a variety of different platforms and devices, all within the browser. Been using it since it launched and I'm real happy.
posted by tommccabe at 5:55 AM on January 18, 2013

BrowserStack is a web app that does this.
posted by backwards guitar at 5:55 AM on January 18, 2013

Best answer: For manual testing, I recommend crossbrowsertesting.com. They've got a wide variety of OS/Browser combinations. If you've found a problem, you can then login to that particular combination and use that combo yourself.

If you want to start automating these sorts of tests, you should look at Selenium. It can be used to run automated navigation and acceptance tests on a site or web application.
posted by tumble at 6:05 AM on January 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If you're a Mac user, there's a new app called Sauce that has been getting good notices in the last few weeks.
posted by bcwinters at 6:21 AM on January 18, 2013

Best answer: Matt Kersley's Responsive is a good one.

Also, just bookmarked these new auto reload tools: LiveReload and Fire.app.
posted by humph at 6:25 AM on January 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: In addition to tools that show you what the site looks like in different browsers, I think there are tools that give you data about what's going on under the hood.

Just for example, there's a Chrome extension called Browser Compatibility Detector that is described as follows: "Browser Compatibility Detector scans for potential incompatible issues on a web page, for popular desktop browsers(IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc). The current version can detect 40 compatibility issues, covering layout, rendering and Javascript".

Also, you can find a lot of similar questions to yours with lots of answers on the StackExchange Webmasters site, for example see the answers to this question.
posted by Dansaman at 6:38 AM on January 18, 2013

You want Sauce Labs. It's free to set up a basic account, and you get the debugging tools for every browser you load. You can also run Selenium tests against their servers in every available browser, if you want to go that route.
posted by deathpanels at 6:39 AM on January 18, 2013

just in case you want one more option, a friend of mine started browserling which is pretty slick.
posted by frijole at 7:53 AM on January 18, 2013

I used the Responsivator on a recent project to check compatibility across mobile device browsers.
posted by telophase at 8:14 AM on January 18, 2013

Adobe's BrowserLab does that, too.
posted by DaveP at 3:21 PM on January 18, 2013