The Usual [browser] Suspects
Since it's nearly impossible to buy a copy of Windows today that comes built with IE 6 (still the most used browser) I hunted around for solutions to continue testing with this antiquated program. I then remembered a trick I summoned long ago to test sites in IE 5.5 -- a standalone Internet Explorer.
I immediately headed to Evolt.org's browser archive. Their list of software reads like a museum of internet browser history that allow you to travel in time back to Mosaic or the "gold" days of Netscape 3. Aside from those trips down digital memory lane they have some other useful tidbits like standalone versions of Internet Explorer. I don't know exactly how it was done but these are copies of this browser that are not at all tightly woven into the fabric of Windows but run side by side with other versions. Luck have it, there's a download for a standalone IE 6 and it works like a charm.
Now I feel any PC can be a powerful testing environment with tools like this and the new addition of Safari for Windows. Since, fortunately, the operating system version itself won't impact the browser or web experience much, one machine running all the browsers shown above easily takes care of 97+% of web users in one boot. Not only that, but the standalone solution easily saves us $750 in machine and software costs for a separate testing environment.
Do you dual boot the Mac to also provide Camino/Safari browsers?
Left by Adam Dempsey | Jun. 15, 2007 at 1:07am
Adam: Yup, that's the beauty of these little rigs. They run the Intel processors like other Macs so can dual boot. That "97+%" figure above is probably more like 99% considering the ability to test in Mac versions of Safari, Camino, Firefox, and Opera. Good stuff all around considering the cost of those little machines.
Left by Kevin at SC | Jun. 15, 2007 at 6:48am
The only drawback I see is that conditional comments don't evaluate properly. Only the installed version of IE will be used to calculate conditional comments, so including stylesheets inside of comments won't work.
Left by Dave at SC | Jun. 19, 2007 at 4:23pm
Cookies don't appear to work 100% either. Still a decent solution for most sites as long as these limitations are know.
Sure would be stellar if Microsoft would put out standalone versions for testing purposes. Imagine the $$ sunk into testing environment hardware and software for something seemingly as simple as a browser.
Left by Kevin at SC | Jun. 19, 2007 at 5:21pm
what I do is use http://www.parallels.com/ and have a windows xp lite and a windows vista lite image, you could go as far as having a virtual setup for service packs too if your really crazy.
Left by Michael Pierce | Jun. 27, 2007 at 8:01am
For testing layouts and CSS/XHTML in various browsers, I came across a pretty nifty website that will allow you to submit a URL and have it generate hi-res images of how the page will look in different browsers:
http://www.browsershots.org/
It's not quite as useful when you're trying to test a private/local build, but it certainly can come in handy.
Left by Nick Williams | Aug. 29, 2007 at 6:10pm
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