Several readers wrote in about last week’s articles on browser spoofing and Crossover. One reader asked if using the spoofing trick is sufficient for testing websites still in development. The answer there is a resounding “no.”
The spoofing trick works only sometimes, but often enough to be worth mentioning here. Websites in development should really be tested using each browser (on each platform) you wish to support. This means installing Firefox, Opera, Camino and others on the Mac, PC and Linux variants.
Crossover is especially nice for those websites that require ActiveX, which is incompatible with all flavors of Mac OS X. Reader Colleen made an especially keen observation about last week’s topics:
“You can actually combine two of your tips in this issue into one. I’ve had two clients who had applications that required ActiveX in Microsoft Internet Explorer to work. ActiveX does not work on a Mac, even with browser spoofing. However, Crossover was a great solution for these people. I haven’t checked recently but Internet Explorer is one of the applications that Crossover supports, and if the website requires ActiveX, it will work under Crossover.”
This said, testing websites in development should still be done using all browsers on all platforms you wish to support.
By extension, another reader asked if the browser spoofing would allow him to access his FairPoint (a regional ISP) account on their website. They seem stuck in the late nineties by not supporting Safari or Firefox, and spoofing did not help. However, they do support Opera.
The real lesson here is that if a site doesn’t work in your preferred browser, try changing the user agent (spoofing); if that fails, try other browsers. If those all fail, Internet Explorer will probably do the trick for you.