One of the biggest problems I face as a web developer is the horrible inconsistencies in how all the various browsers and versions display web sites. Really, someone should force them all to display the same way, but that will never happen. The alternative is to just write standards compliant code, pray, and test on a wide array of browsers. Currently, I check sites in Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 as well as FireFox 2 and 3 on the PC. On the Mac, I shoot for the latest FireFox and Safari versions. The only problem I had with that was not being able to test in the latest browsers on a Mac because my old iMac doesn’t support them. I’ll be buying a Mac Mini soon, but I needed something for right now and I wanted a solution that would also work for people who just develop one site or application and can’t afford to buy a new Mac just to test for a bit. That’s when I found Browsrcamp.
To be fair, my business partner found the site. It’ll take a snapshot of a website from a Mac’s perspective for free, or you can sign up for a weekly, monthly, or yearly plan to have direct VNC access to a Mac box running OS X. I picked up a month long access package for $19 via PayPal, downloaded RealVNC, installed and connected. The whole process took me about five minutes from choosing my account length to being on the Mac and browsing. It’s not the fastest connection, but it’s a huge upgrade from trying to guess my way through the code and load free snapshot after free snapshot.
The service is great for testing development, but what else could you use it for, I wondered. Immediately, I thought of my iPhone developer’s license. I paid $99 for it and haven’t been able to use it because I need a mac with OS X on it. It could be slow, but it just might work. And what about the .MOV video file I wanted to try un-corrupting. It can be done by editing the video file headers, but a lot of the software for that is Mac only. I’m sure I could come up with a couple other things, but I thought I’d let you chime in. What would YOU use a service like this for?
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