I was talking to a friend a few days ago about compatibility. Over 20% of his visitors are using Internet Explorer 6, he was running the latest version of Internet Explorer, which at the time was version 7. Essentially his CSS was rendering adversely in IE6, the main content was pushed under the sidebar, presenting the page as primarily white space. He had therefore alienated over 20% of his visitors/potential customers. A lot of web designers refuse to make their website compatible with old technologies such as IE6. But the fact is, people are still using ancient browsers. If you’re running an e-commerce website, then you simply can’t afford to ignore these visitors.

There are simply too many browsers spread over multiple operating systems, all with long version histories. As a developer or website owner, you’d be mad to install everything internally for testing… clinically insane. Which is where BrowserShots.org comes in handy. Enter your website address and choose from a range of browsers which have been installed on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and BSD.

Processing usually takes around 30 minutes depending on the number of browsers you select. You’ll then be able to access your screenshots, quickly ascertaining which configurations are displaying abnormally.

The service even allows you to select a preferred screen resolution, allowing you to check your design on an 800×600 resolution (among others), which although seemingly redundant, 800×600 is still used by 4% of users according to W3Schools. The Firefox extension Window Resizer is also useful for testing your site in standard resolutions.

Safari on the iPhone is gaining traction, you can preview your design with iPhoney. Unfortunately it’s Mac OS X only and it wouldn’t let me send text messages or make calls!