Microsoft's SuperPreview: A Web site developer's new best friend?

Microsoft showed off at Mix '09 a new tool -- Expression Web SuperPreview -- that could prove very useful as new browsers from a variety of vendors proliferate.

The tool allows developers and designers to see how their sites look and work with different browsers so they can debug them more easily.

SuperPreview is part of Microsoft's forthcoming Expression Web 3 release. Microsoft made available for download a subset of the full SuperPreview tool -- the part that developers and designers  can use to compare how their sites look in Internet Explorer (IE) 6, 7 and 8. The full release of SuperPreview will allow developers to also compare how their sites look in Firefox, Sarari, Chrome and more.

(Update: My mistake: Microsoft isn't planning on supporting Chrome or Opera with the first release of SuperPreview. The final first release will support IE 6, 7 and 8; Safari (for Mac, not Windows); and Firefox, officials told me.)

With Microsoft expected to release to the Web the final version of IE 8 this week. Given how many existing sites don't look and work right in the more standards-compatible IE 8, SuperPreview could be handy for folks trying to tweak their sites to work in IE 8.

Long Zheng of istartedsomething has more details and screen shots of the new SuperPreview tool.