On 26/05/2004, at 10:15 AM, Peter Firminger wrote:
It's very difficult (impossible) to emulate all the bugs in a browser
without running the browser. Emulators can emulate the required behaviour
but generally not the bugs. So unless you actually do what people like
browsercam have done and set up a bank of machines running the browsers and
screenshot them, it's a bit pointless.
It would be conceivable (but a LOT of work) for someone to build an emulator that took advantage of all opensource browsers' rendering engines in one neat package, but the reality is that a lot of browsers (IE in particular, but plenty of others) are closed-source, so there's very little we can do about it.
And as you say, the only true way to test a browser is with the browser running natively in it's intended environment, so an emulator will never achieve accurate results, so it's pretty much useless.
What I'd like to see is a program for Mac OS X that will load a URL into all currently running browsers (including those in X11, VirtualPC and MacClassic, so it's truly cross-platform), take a screen shot, and present them back in one tabbed interface as a series of screen shots which the designer can view to get a decent overview of what's going on browser-to-browser in one location.
Hit "refresh", and all N browsers refresh, take a new screen shot, and load back into the tabbed interface. A small "go to this browser" button would bring that particular browser/window to the front, so that the user could study it "in the flesh".
Even better would be if this previewing program took notice of mouse position, and did "long" screen shots that continue down "below the fold".
Screw opensource -- I would pay serious cash for such a tool! This is MUCH better than browsercam, because
- it doesn't require a subscription, network connection, internet access, etc
- it doesn't require any bandwidth, and would be virtually instant (my guess would be a 5-20 second delay)
If any crazy Mac developers out there are listening, GET TO WORK :)
--- Justin French http://indent.com.au
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