A few years ago I had the idea to create a collaborative site where web designers could see what their site looked like on different operating systems and web browsers. If enough people joined, there would be near-complete coverage of testing platforms and designers would be able to share screenshots and usage issues. It was meant to benefit individual web designers who don’t usually have a way to test their sites on every platform imaginable.

I have learned I wasn’t the only one with the bright idea. Brian Alvey of meet-the-makers.com and John Witchel had similar ideas, but he was the only one to implement his and it’s turned out quite nicely.

One benefit of my idea though is that other users would be able to interact with the site. Screenshots don’t let you see the behavior of DHTML menus or Javascript mouseovers so you wouldn’t know if those worked or not. Even with that limitation though, it’s a great idea for anyone who creates web sites.