I once noticed a link that invited you to view your web in different browsers.

I wish I had bookmarked it , maybe I did before I lost everything

Does any one have any idea where such a handy tool may be found?

go to anybrowser.com

Praveen, good answer. I had never been there before, it will be helpful in designing sites.

Could you explain to me why this would benefit webmasters?

tercede
You can see what your site looks like at diffrent resloutions fast and easily. That's one of the things I would use most.

Compatibility of a website. If someone is viewing the site on webTV and can't see something, wouldn't you like to know even if you don't have webTV?

Um... Yea... What Crow said...

also how does it look in on a mac compaired to a pc

There's also http://browsercam.com but you need to pay for the full service

There's always the option of downloading most browsers, as I have.

I've got IE, Opera, Mozilla (and Netscape, as well as other browsers based off the Mozilla engine), and HotJava. Have I forgotten any?

There's another trick on this forum that lets you test what your site looks like in different resolutions. Great trick, IMO.

Conker

Downloading different browsers helps some with the initial design, but you can't always download all the different variations.

For example, you can't have more than one version of IE running on a single machine (unless you've got your harddrive partitioned or something).

Also, having different browsers on a single platform won't help if you need to see what your site looks like on a Mac, Windows and *Nix platform.

Sometimes a problem with a design won't show up in one browser, but it will cause crashes of other browsers. Or your site may not be viewable at all in another browser. This seems to happen most often when somebody designs a site using FrontPage, or only checks what the site looks like in IE.

Then there's the whole font size problem. Choosing the wrong font size can make your site totally unviewable in some browsers.

I could go on about accessibility issues and non-graphical browsers (i.e. Lynx) and speaking browsers (i.e. Jaws), but I think you've got the basic idea.

Anybrowser and BrowserCam are just really great resources!

HTH!
Syren

Is desinging your site to look great with all of the avaiable browsers really worth the extra time required to do it? According to my logs very few users stray from IE or Netscape.

I would think it would depend on the purpose of your site.

If you're in sales, how much is one lost sale worth to you? How much are 20 or more lost sales worth?

If it's an informational site, how important is the information you're providing? Is it something vital? If so, you want to get the message out to as many people as possible, don't you?

And what about folks using PDAs or cell phones to access websites? Do you need to get your message to them as well?

If you've got a government site in the U.S. (and that includes schools and, I think, other organizations receiving federal funding), it's currently mandated that your site meet Section 508 Accessibility Standards. That means you are required by Federal law to make your site accessible to as many people as possible. That includes the blind, deaf, colorblind, etc.

Section 508 Accessibility also means that you can't discriminate 'cause someone doesn't want to use one of the "major" browsers to view your website.

If your site is for fun, or is geared toward a specific group of people who you know won't be using Lynx or Jaws, maybe you can afford to lose the traffic.

Not everyone can afford that luxury.

HTH!
Syren

BTW, I think they've recently enacted some kind of law in the UK regarding Accessibility, but I'm not sure. If it may apply to you, it's sure worth looking into the details.