www.browsercam.com is providing a service that I figure will someday be considered quite handy for the web-publishing masses. It is quite simple, really. They open up the URL of your choosing in a variety of platforms, using a variety of browsers using a variety of settings (such as flash/no-flash, screen resolution, etc). They take screenshots of what the URL looks like, and show them to you in a handy thumbnail-based gallery that clearly identifies what it is you’re looking at.

I came across this originally from a zeldman.com entry, but didn’t really give it a spin until my old friend Morte mentioned his use of it in regards to his weblog.

Folks like Jeffrey Zeldman I expect to have a Windows, Macintosh, and Linux box at the ready, with a variety of browsers installed so they can meticulously pour over their professional creations. The real value of a browsercam.com service comes in on the low-budget end, however. Folks like Morte and myself can do proper cross-platform checking not without investing in additional hardware.

For years I’ve always kept a copy of Netscape (or its analogue, Mozilla) handy for cross-browser checking, though I personally use Satan’s own web browser, Internet Explorer (for purely asthetic reasons). I have also added Opera to my toolbox, but this doesn’t help with with tracking down platform-specific bugs, such as Mac IE’s notorious horizontal-scroll problem. Now the kind folks at Browsercam.com have given me a means of checking such things without having to drop $1k+ on a Mac for which I’d have no other use. Thank you!