In June 2009 Adobe has announced a limited developer preview of BrowserLab. BrowserLab is online hosted service by Adobe that enable web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web.

New Features

• Save Locally: Save screenshots generated by BrowserLab in either 1-Up or 2-Up views. This lets you capture renderings of your web pages in different browsers, to save for easy reference or sharing with clients and colleagues. Added January 14, 2010
• Additional browser support: Preview web pages in more browsers: Internet Explorer 8, Safari 4, Chrome 3.0 (XP) and Firefox 3.5 (XP and OS X). Each of these additional browsers can be added to existing Browser Sets.
• Rulers and Guides: Pinpoint the exact location of any area within a screenshot. Rulers on the X and Y axes show you precise pixel dimensions, with optional guidelines for added accuracy.
• Move and Pan: Move to any area of a screenshot by simply clicking and dragging your mouse, or using the arrow keys.
• Onion Skin Registration: Tackle precise layout issues within specific areas of your designs, with custom registration of the screenshots in BrowserLab’s Onion Skin view.
• Screenshot Delay: Pause the rendering of a screenshot by up to 10 seconds, so you can preview content that needs time to generate.

Supported Browsers and Operating Systems

• Firefox 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 (Windows XP and Mac OS X) .
• Internet Explorer 6.X, 7.X, and 8.X (Windows XP) .
• Safari 3.X and 4.X (Mac OS X) .
• Chrome 3.0 (Windows XP).

Viewing and Diagnostics Tools

Screenshots can be viewed in a single view, side by side view, or as an overlay view with variable transparency. Each viewing option features a zoom function. We’ve also added measurement tools like Rulers and Guides, custom Onion Skin Registration, as well as the ability to move quickly to specific areas of a screenshot. You can also save screenshots in 1-Up or 2-Up views.

Browser Sets

Browser Sets allow designers to customize, edit, and save a combination of browsers to test.

The BrowserLab free preview is available to a limited number of users, while we monitor its performance. Please visit our service status page for updates.

Google has released an updated version of Mac OS X, includes Google Earth browser plug-in. Now users will be able to use Google Earth software as a browser plug-in. Around six month back it was released and made available for Windows but now the Google Earth plug-in has been made available for the Mac & they are still working on the Linux version. Digital Earth Blog was the first to blog about it & points to a few sites such as EarthSwoop and Mini Flight Sim where people can try the plug-in.

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