Preview site on Unix browser from PC

I would like to find out if my site works on Unix machine browsers. Does any one know of a way to do this from my PC? I apologize is this has been discussed, but I searched the forum (and Google) and couldn't find an answer to this.

 

I'm not sure if I understand what you want so bare with me if I don't answer your question.

I spend 95% of my time on a computer on a Linux box and the default browser for the Gnome desktop is Mozilla. I immediately update to Mozillla Firefox. Then there is another browser I can use, Konqueror. Eh.. I don't really like it so I don't use it very often. Another browser that's available and I've used on occasion is Opera. Both Opera and Firefox are available for Windoze (they are both free btw). But that's not going to let you know what a particular *nix user is seeing because they might not have Windoze fonts installed..

Now there is this "new" UNIX flavor out there that is gaining in popularity. It's called Mac OSX. I believe the default browser for Mac's is Safari, but I don't know for sure.

But the bottom line is this: over 99% of my visitors use IE, Firefox, Opera, or Nutscrape which are all available for Windoze.

 

http://www.browsercam.com/ <-free preview I think, but it costs
or
http://www.netmechanic.com/browser-photo/tour/BrowserList.htm <--paid service

http://www.anybrowser.com is free, but it sucks.

 

Get Lynx for windows. It's a text browser.

http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm

 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I took a fast look and it looks like the browsercam.com is the only one that will let me test if the site's javascript, etc. will work on a browser running on a unix/linux computer. I will try it tomorrow.

Since Explorer enjoyed a virtual monopoly we only tested for Explorer on PC. Now with the release of Firefox (I recommend it -- the mail application is even better) and its increasing popularity we have started testing for it and find that there are many things that don't work on it on the PC version.

Linux is also becoming more popular and I think it is important to start testing for that too. Things are becoming more complicated for designers. On the other hand, now that there is competition, the browsers will get better.

 

If you are only concerned about the javascript working correctly on *nix boxes, you needn't be. Every modern browser (I assume even I.E.) gives the user the option of enabling JS or not. If your pages don't work properly when JS is disabled, you might consider testing for that condidtion. I'm not sure off the top of my head the best way to do that but I'm sure there is someone out there who does.

 

do a google search for unix windows browser converter.

 

You can set up an *BSD or Linux environment easily on an old box. Test there.

I use a thing called VMWare (go to link of same name with the usual decorations - I can't post links, yet.) It's a bit pricey, but allows multiple OS's running concurrently on the same i586+ machine.

On my Win XP notebook I have a FreeBSD virtual machine running apache + mysql + php, X11, etc. If I want to do something xNIX specific, I just bring up the VM screen and do it in that environment. Meanwhile, it gives me a nice, isolated server environment.

You want a good performing machine to run this, with a lot of memory. I'm currently using a 1.0 'M' processor notebook with a gig of memory, allowing half a gig for each OS. It's working fine.

rickb

 

It is pricey, especially the multi-CPU version. One nice thing about it is that it's possible to make a snapshot of your OS (includes *everything* - registry, files, etc) and then VMWare tracks any changes you made since the that snapshot. Later you just restore back to the snapshot in a few minutes, sometimes seconds. Kinds like ghosting, but faster (it better be at this price!).

In most cases, though, it is simpler to either set up a dual-boot machine and flip it between Linux and Windows when necessary or just install Linux on an older machine (500+ MHz will do) and use a monitor switch.

J.D.

 

Right. But it sure is nice to be on an airplane or restaurant, fire up the notebook, and have both or more environments running concurrently and talking to each other, to boot! It's like having a whole lab in your notebook.

rickb

 

If you have some free hard drive space you can do a dual-boot.

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html