Do you dare try Browsershots?

One of the reasons I try to get my budget clients to use "canned" templates on their brochure websites is that the templates are generally coded to look good on a variety of browsers. They don't break, even if the person viewing them is using an old version of Internet Explorer or the latest version of Safari for the Mac.

And I'm astonished by the number of times I've been writing content for the site of corporate client and have discovered that their professionally done custom-designed websites break in a standard browser — usually because their designer didn't bother to test the code.

Browsershots is an online web development tool that lets you submit a web address and get back screenshots that show how your page renders in a variety of browsers and browser versions.

And you don't need to be a developer to do this — you can use Browsershots to check out your own existing website. But be prepared for the ugly truth. I wasn't, and was appalled by the way the typefaces on my iWeb-created web pages appeared in some of the Windows browsers. Back to the drawing board...