Web designers these days should at a minimum look at their pages in Firefox, Internet Explorer (painful though that may be), and perhaps Opera and Safari. Often, we tend to overlook the growing number of text only browsers that happen by our sites. Tonight I happened on a great tool to help you see what your page would look like in Lynx, a graphic free browser, should you choose not to load a copy yourself. This tool allows you to see your page like it would appear to a Lynx browser.
That site offers a number of other great tools as well, including:
– a header viewer — see what your server is putting out
– a http request scan — see what you are giving servers such as your browser string, referrer, etc.
– search engine simulator — think like a search engine when looking at your pages
– backwards compatibility check — see what the page looks like with some tag types removed that weren’t supported
While none of these things are “rocket science” in scope, it is still a handly little group of tools for the kit.