How to run browser compatibility check in Dreamweaver?

Not all the browsers display CSS in the same way. What looks great in one browser may look totally different in another. Most of the time the bugs in browser software cause it. Dreamweaver CS3 has a browser compatibility tool that lets you find and correct errors inside your page. This tool scans the HTML and CSS of the page and notifies you about the errors. This tool can save you tons of time. If you have an external style sheet attached Dreamweaver will check that well.

Open the page or CSS stylesheet you would like to check. Select Check Browser Compatibility, from the Check Page menu. This menu is located at the top of the document window.

Browser runs the compatibility check and displays result in Result window. It also tells you which browser the issue will affect. As you can see in image below first issue will cause problem in Netscape 8.0.

Sometimes it also gives you description of the problem. Quite wonderful.

Notice the icons at the beginning of the issues. ! mark inside a red circle indicates the warnings about the CSS while, red pie graph represent likelihood of encountering a problem in a particular browser. Double click on the issue in result panel to select the element affected by that issue. It will jump to that issue in code and underline it with green color.

Jump to previous and next issue by right clicking and selecting Next Issue or Previous Issue or you can also select it from the Check Page Menu.

To select browser for Dreamweaver to check against, click on the green arrow in the upper left corner of the Result Panel and choose settings. From there, select the version to check against.

You can also ignore an issue from the compatibility check. Right click on the issue and choose Ignore Issue from the context menu. This will exclude issue from future checking. If you want to edit that list, right click on the issue and select Edit Ignore Issue List. DW will open Exceptions.xml file, make changes in the file and save it.

To see report in a browser, click on the browser button on the left side of the result panel.

When you identify a problem, try to fix it. If you need some help from Dreamweaver, click on the View Solutions link at the bottom of the result panel.