Experimenting HTML5...

[aa.miho1987]

Hi all, just a quick question,
If I'm looking to implement HTML5 into my site, how should I test the site?

Mainly, I'm looking to test out the degradation/fallback solution on different/older browser.

Hope you understand what I mean.
Thanks!

[Alan]

The same way you would test CSS degradation: by looking at the page in an older browser.

Most modern browsers and their development versions can be downloaded and installed side-by-side. If you want to test older versions of Internet Explorer, I would suggest installing a couple of virtual servers (VirtualBox and VMWare can do this for free, you just need a CD and key for the Windows version you want to use; if you have Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, you can also get the Windows XP Mode which gives you an easy way to run virtual applications natively).

If you only want to look at some renderings, there are websites for that: browsershots.org is a bit unreliable and slow, but has a huge selection of browsers you can test in for free, IE NetRenderer only allows you to test in various versions of Internet Explorer, but is much faster and more reliable at the same price (i.e. free).

If you are a web designer and already use a lot of Adobe products, you might want to give Adobe BrowserLab a try (it uses a subscription model, I think, but is integrated into the other Adobe CS Live tools, so it might integrate into your workflow more easily).