[tavilach]

Other than using a PC to test various browsers, or buying VPC, is there any practical way to test your CSS styles on a Mac? I'm finally starting to use CSS, and I feel forced to use my PC for web development: Which is sad, because I'd love to use SubEthaEdit and CSSEdit on the Mac!

I've seen sites that offer screenshots of your site in various browsers, but a screenshot just doesn't seem like enough. Plus, I really don't want to pay each time I test.

Any ideas? I'm sure many people can relate to this issue, and there's just got to be a better way!

[Phil Sherry]

Own a Mac and a PC, and test on both. It's the best solution, in the long run.

Those screenshot sites are all very well, but if you want to use Firefox's Web Dev or Aardvark extensions to check why a div is spazzing out (Technical Term) on the PC version, you're screwed. VPC is far too slow, which only aggrivates the situation.

[Chuckit]

If you want to test how your site works on a PC-only browser, your only choice is to use a PC or PC emulator. You can just use your Mac to connect to a PC through VNC, though, and run the PC browser that way.

[Millennium]

Keep in mind that of the four major browser engines (Trident, Gecko, KHTML/WebCore, and Opera), three of them are written to be cross-platform, and these three exist on the Mac. If a site works in one of these engines on the Mac, you can be reasonably confident that it will work in that same engine on other platforms unless you deliberately cause it to do otherwise.

Unfortunately, the other engine -Trident, which powers IE/Windows- is a very big other indeed. A screenshot site can be good enough if you don't use CSS rollovers or any JavaScript at all, but if your interface is at all dynamic then these won't work for you.

[madmacgames]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Keep in mind that of the four major browser engines (Trident, Gecko, KHTML/WebCore, and Opera), three of them are written to be cross-platform, and these three exist on the Mac. If a site works in one of these engines on the Mac, you can be reasonably confident that it will work in that same engine on other platforms unless you deliberately cause it to do otherwise.

I'd say this is a good rule of thumb; however, I have found minor discrepancies in the different OS versions, especially of Firefox. Nothing that ruins or breaks a page, but there are definitely slight rendering differences between Firefox PC and Firefox Mac.

[Phil Sherry]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Keep in mind that of the four major browser engines (Trident, Gecko, KHTML/WebCore, and Opera), three of them are written to be cross-platform, and these three exist on the Mac. If a site works in one of these engines on the Mac, you can be reasonably confident that it will work in that same engine on other platforms unless you deliberately cause it to do otherwise.

In the early stages of FireFox, I found two bugs in it which only existed on the one platform. i.e. one was on Mac but not PC, and the other was vice versa. That's kinda rare these days, but it still pays to check.

[Simon Mundy]

...as well as the distinctly different font rendering between Macs and Pcs for the same typeface - it can ruin your whole day if you've counted on some nice single-line menu items on a mac that seem to break over two lines on a PC... sigh...