BrowserLab
From Adobe Labs
Adobe BrowserLab - Current Status
The BrowserLab service is currently available.
Recurring weekly maintenance outage - Thursdays, 5-7pm Pacific time.
No other planned outages are scheduled at this time.
Free Preview Registration Status
The limited free preview for BrowserLab is currently available. To login or register, please visit http://browserlab.adobe.com.
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Tip: Faster Screenshots
For faster screenshots, use multiple Browser Set configurations so you can request a select group of browsers at a time. The more browsers within a Browser Set, the longer it will take for screenshots to be returned. This is especially important as we continue to add more browsers to BrowserLab. Remember that you can have up to 10 Browser Sets, giving you flexibility for different testing needs.
Learn more about setting up Browser Sets.
Adobe BrowserLab - Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
What is Adobe® BrowserLab and what does it do?
- Adobe BrowserLab is an online service that allows web professionals to test their websites on popular browsers and operating systems. Screenshots of actual browser renderings are generated in real time, with multiple viewing options to help pinpoint issues.
Who should try BrowserLab?
- BrowserLab is ideal for professional web designers and web developers of all sizes, to help simplify and expedite browser compatibility testing.
What is the difference between BrowserLab and other browser compatibility testing products?
- BrowserLab offers a unique combination of speed, ease of use, and powerful diagnostic tools, with customizable testing preferences. When used with Dreamweaver CS4® software, web professionals can also test local content and different states of interactive content.
What countries and languages are supported by BrowserLab?
- The BrowserLab online service is available in English only, for users in the United States.
Limited Free Preview
When will Adobe BrowserLab be available?
- The BrowserLab online service is available now as a limited free preview.
What does BrowserLab cost?
- There is no charge to use BrowserLab during the limited free preview. It will remain free through the end of 2010. In early 2011, we plan on offering this service as a subscription of $10-20USD per month, which will include Adobe InContext Editing. There will be no limit to the number of web pages a user tests.
How can I get a BrowserLab account so I can try it?
- Please visit the BrowserLab home page and click on the “Get Started Now” button to sign up for a BrowserLab account. You will need an Adobe ID. If you do not have an Adobe ID, please visit http://www.adobe.com/membership. Note: The limited free preview is only available to a limited number of users, and over time we will allow more users to try BrowserLab.
Why do I have to wait before I can try it?
- BrowserLab is a very resource-intensive service and we need to monitor our performance and scalability. In order to assure the smoothest transition to our official release, we’ll be increasing the number of free preview users over time. If you aren’t able to try BrowserLab just yet, we apologize for the inconvenience -- please be patient and check our status updates regularly.
What are the goals of the limited free preview?
- Our goals for the BrowserLab limited free preview are to give the community an opportunity to provide feedback, help identify bugs or issues, and make suggestions to improve the service before launching the paid service.
Using Adobe BrowserLab
How do I use BrowserLab?
- Visit our help page for questions related to usage and features.
Do you have any tutorials on BrowserLab?
- This video shows how to use BrowserLab.
Adobe BrowserLab Support
Where can I get additional support?
- As BrowserLab is a limited free preview right now, official support is not available. However, peer-to-peer discussion forums are available for discussing issues you may encounter with BrowserLab.
- For detailed help on using BrowserLab, please visit our help page.
Adobe BrowserLab - Known Issues
- Pages behind a redirection should be tested directly, and not through the initial redirection URL.
- You cannot preview a page or application that is secured by HTTP authentication at this time.
- No warning/error message for unsupported browsers when accessing the BrowserLab application. Please use one of the supported browsers in the BrowserLab system requirements.
- Layouts larger than 4096 pixels on any side will be cropped to 4096 pixels.
- A valid server SSL certificate is required on the remote server in order to preview pages via the https:// protocol.
- If you have installed an earlier version of the BrowserLab extensions (prior to 1/14/10), you will need to update them in order to use BrowserLab with Dreamweaver. Please follow these instructions to install the updated MXPs above.
- Download and install the latest MXPs located above.
- Click ‘Yes’ when prompted to replace the existing BrowserLab extensions.
- To use the BrowserLab extensions for Dreamweaver CS4 with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard):
- If you are installing BrowserLab extensions on Snow Leopard for the first time:
- Install Dreamweaver CS4
- Install the Extension Manager 2.1 patch and CSI 1.0.2 patch from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4568
- Follow prompts to install Browser Lab Extensions
- If you received an error message while trying to install the second BrowserLab extension with Snow Leopard:
- Stop the “CS4ServiceManager” process (In your Activity Monitor, quit the process called CS4ServiceManager)
- Rename ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CS4ServiceManager to ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CS4ServiceManager_bkp
- Reinstall the second BrowserLab extension
- If you are installing BrowserLab extensions on Snow Leopard for the first time:
- If prompted to upgrade to Flash Player 10 (required for BrowserLab) on Vista 64-bit, you will need to restart the machine before using Dreamweaver's BrowserLab integration.
- Captures on Firefox 2 on OS X and Firefox 2 & 3 on Windows of websites containing Flash content will not show the Flash content. The Flash is loaded as part of the capture process and the page will be accurately laid out with the proper width and height of the Flash allowing you to test the display of the HTML & CSS (non-flash) components of your page. This is due to a bug in Mozilla, and has been fixed in Firefox 3 on OS X.
- Safari on Mac might display it's BrowserLab window between the Dreamweaver workspace and the front window when triggering a preview from Dreamweaver.
- If your BrowserLab session expires, you may not be able to preview from Dreamweaver CS4 until you've logged back in from your browser.
- If you encounter unclear error messages when attempting to install the BrowserLab Dreamweaver extensions, please verify that you are using Extension Manager 2.1 to do so. If not, please upgrade your copy of the Extension Manager to 2.1 before installing the BrowserLab extensions.
- If your page is wider or longer than 2048 pixels, the zoom tool's maximum resolution may be reduced from 100%.
- The dreamweaver:/// URL in BrowserLab may not match the local folder hierarchy of the related Dreamweaver site. The correct assets and files are being used, however.
- When previewing a page from Dreamweaver using a testing server, BrowserLab may not display the results consistently if that page includes elements that are drawn dynamically after the page loads.
- When uninstalling the BrowserLab Dreamweaver extensions, the Extension Manager may report the extensions were uninstalled successfully, but they are not fully removed until the local machine is restarted.
- On Windows XP/Vista, "Preview in Adobe BrowserLab" may not bring the browser to the front of your onscreen windows.
- When previewing dynamic sites via the BrowserLab panel in Dreamweaver, if "Local" is selected, the source file is sent to BrowserLab as raw code. In this case, please try the Remote option and preview on the remote server instead.
- When previewing pages using Live View in Dreamweaver using the 'Remote' method, if the testing server is on your local machine BrowserLab cannot find the page. Please use the "Local" option if you are using a local testing server on your machine or private network.
- Preview in BrowserLab doesn't generate screenshots if there is uppercase/lowercase(case) mismatch between Dreamweaver site’s root folder path defined in Site Settings and local computer’s path. Please ensure that the case on the paths match exactly the local computer’s path, it is case sensitive.
- Code view change does not reflect in Preview in BrowserLab when in Live View. Please refresh in design view before selecting Preview in BrowserLab.
- Browser set updates are not communicated to all BrowserLab sessions if more than one is opened. Please close any additional BrowserLab sessions and open up new ones if needed.
- If previewing from Dreamweaver using Firefox 3.5 and the browser “Remember History” option is checked, Local Content will not be rendered. To work around this, change the browser option to “Never Remember History” and preview again.
