Spoon Browser Sandbox is a free, cloud-based service that lets you run popular browsers directly from the Web without installing them on your PC. Spoon offers an impressive selection of the most current -- and not so current -- versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. At this time, Spoon Browser Sandbox can be run on most any Windows-based computer. However unfortunately, it is not yet available for the Mac. However, Spoon can be run on the Mac in Windows emulation mode.
Note: Since this article was written, Microsoft has asked Spoon to remove their products from the service.
Note: Since this article was written, Microsoft has asked Spoon to remove their products from the service.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 10 minutes
Here's How:
- Go to: http://spoon.net/browsers
- Click the Load button on the image of the browser you want to test. Spoon opens a new window running a virtualized version of the browser you have chosen.
- Type the url of the site you want to test into the address bar, and press Enter. This is not an emulator, but a fully-functioning browser, so you can explore every page and process in the site. Because Spoon lets you open multiple windows running different browsers, it can be easy to lose track of which one your using at the moment. If you're not sure, you can always go to the Help menu and click About.
Tips:
- When testing a site, take a screenshot of each page for reference. You can paste each screenshot as a separate layer into a Photoshop file, and save a different file for each browser tested.
- To capture the screen on a PC: Alt + Print Screen
- To capture the screen on Mac OSX: Command Key + Shift + 3