stockxpertcom_id749860_size1When it comes to web design, anyone who’s ever had to do it knows the headaches involved in multi platform compatibility and the inevitable tweaks needed to make your site look identical on all browsers. Nothing is more painful than coming up with an absolutely amazing layout for Firefox, only to have it look less than satisfactory with Internet Explorer.

Unfortunately, the necessity of these tweaks is likely to never vanish. As a result, every web designer needs a solid set of tools to help them test their design on all platforms. Each tool can act as a powerful weapon in the designers arsenal and can help you develop a highly compatible layout.

Here are some of the ones we’ve personally used to great success. These have all been absolutely invaluable to me and I hope they’ll be just as useful to you as well:

  1. BrowserCam – An amazing online tool that can help you test the layout of your site on a wide variety of operating system and browser combinations. Results are relayed very quickly and you can test and tweak your layout almost realtime for results. The system does have a service fee after a free trial, so it might not be for everyone.
  2. Browsershots – BrowserShots is a similar tool to BrowserCam, except completely free to use. The big difference is that BrowserShots results are not realtime so you may have to wait a few minutes to get your results. I find BrowserShots is a great tool to test my layouts in once I’ve manually tested them on most platforms. It’s a great tool for double checking the more obscure browsers for compatibility.
  3. FireBug for Firefox – FireBug is the ultimate addon for tracking site problems from within Firefox. Once installed, you get a much more comprehensive error tracking platform to help you diagnose problems with things such as JavaScript and HTML markup errors. A very handy extension and one I install instantly every time I reinstall Firefox.
  4. Web Developer – Another addon for Firefox that allows you to check the fine details of your application such as how the structure is presented and which components of your layout are causing problems.