Apologies for off-topic, but I think this warrants it.
I started working on a new theme for my site in March, and happened to upgrade to IE7 around the same time. I ran into a few IE6 issues (fwiw, some absolute positioning hiccups and (views) list spacing mainly), but found it an absolute nightmare to fix since I had no access to Internet Explorer 6 any more. I only have one computer and do web stuff at home in my own time.
I've known about browsershots for a while, and it's lovely, but when doing trial and error it's painful to wait a couple of hours, and I felt like I was using up way too much of their bandwidth.
I'd also seen some convoluted ways to run both IE6 and IE7 on the same machine, but when I decided the best option was to just try doing that and googled it, I came across this multiple IE installer; it allows you to run IE3, IE4.01, IE5, IE5.5, and IE6 all as standalone applications, no complex setup. I'm not worried about versions earlier than IE6 for my purposes but it's been really handy, and I've seen very, very little traffic about it anywhere.
So here's the link: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
They're also available as individual .exes from http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/32bit/standalone
I can't vouch for the quality at all, and I've had one or two minor annoyances with it, but since it's only for testing and not real surfing it's saved me days of headaches. I hope it helps some people running into the same issues.
Comments
Using the stand-alone
Using the stand-alone versions is handy but there are several issues known that cause faulty rendering and other problems.
The best way to test in several IE versions is using the Virtual PC images Microsoft provides for free.
Expired
Unfortunately, that offer expired on April 1st.. Have they released another image with a new expiration date?
Yeah, the last version is
Yeah, the last version is still free and works. Here's one that works until the 17th august: Microsoft download.
That's a pretty horrible
That's a pretty horrible solution they've come up with, especially with the timebombing - I don't see why they couldn't just fix the rendering problems in the standalones tbh. Thanks for the heads up though. If I have to do some serious testing before IE6 dies I'll bear that in mind.
No flame wars, please
I do NOT want to start a flame war, but the best solution is to get an Intel Macintosh with either VMWare’s Fusion or Parallel’s Desktop for Mac which allows you to run any WIndows OS (or Linux) on your Mac through virtualization (i.e. the OS is running quickly and natively on the Intel chip, and not in a slow emulated virtual machine.)
With that set up on one computer, I’m able to test:
I also get the huge advantage of having a fully configurable Apache web server, Postfix mail server, BIND DNS server, and easily-installable MySQL database system. My development system is my test web server. I have my apache server (and DNS) tricked out so that client1.dev.albin.net, client2.dev.albin.net are all automatically configured just by creating a "client1" folder or "client2" folder in my ~/Sites/ folder.
Best of all for Windows “switchers”, you won’t lose any investment you may have in Windows software because, with the possible exception of Windows games (which I don’t own and haven’t tested), you can run any Windows software in the virtualization world. I have tested the full MS Office suite including Outlook w/ Exchange and there are no issues.
Note, I said this is the best solution (in terms of scope of testing), but it might not be the best solution for those who don’t have the cash to buy a new Mac and new Mac software. But, I still believe that the total cost of ownership is lower for Macs given all it can do for web development.
- John (JohnAlbin)
multiple windows OS?
if you own parallels, how do you get IE5, IE6, and IE7? do you install multiple copies of windows? thata a lot of guest OS action. what about activation on those Windows installs. does MS check to see if each has a separate license? since MS has released images for vmware, thats seems a lot more attractive than parallels ... i'm gonna buy a macbook one of these days. browsing on my powerpc has become slow (not unlike how windows gets slow over the years).
Activation Issues
I don’t own Parallels. I’m using VMWare Fusion Beta 3. Once it is goes to 1.0, I’m going to evaluate both products and make my decision on which to buy.
I have 3 virtual machines:
So, I’ve got 2 MS licenses; 1 for Win98 and 1 for WinXP. (Win98 doesn’t do activation.) So I don’t have any WinXP activation issues.
(As a side note, testing your theme is an important issue, so I don’t feel it’s OT.)
- John (JohnAlbin)
Apache config
JohnAlbin:
How do you do this? And just how is your Apache server set up? Have you upgraded it to a newer version, or do you use the one shipped with OS X? I found it a bit difficult to update Apache and install PHP (with all its libraries), but then again I'm new to this. The Apple documentation helped me a lot, but I would love to see one concise tutorial for how to set up a good development/testing environment on a (Intel) Mac! (doesn't have to be written by you, but i'll praise you if you do)
MAMP is an easy to
MAMP is an easy to configure/install package that installs Apache, MySQL and PHP on OSX. Just a few clicks and you're ready to go, no need to update apache or activate stuff.
For configuring Apache easily there's Headdress. Great for setting up virtual hosts and such, but it's not free.
I'm on a PC, so I use XAMPP
I'm on a PC, so I use XAMPP (and I love it), but I'm concerned about the development environment being different than the production environment (which is on shared hosting). Is this a problem for you too?
learn one, teach one, do one
It’s not much of a problem
It’s much faster to develop when you don’t have to upload your files before testing them. I find that far outweighs any problems that might occur because of configuration differences between your system and the shared host.
I use PHP 4.4.x and MySQL 5.0.x on my Mac development system. The use of PHP 4 means I don’t have to worry too much about differences between PHP 4 and 5 (there are many). And I always make sure I only use SQL that is MySQL 4.1 compatible. That minimizes the chance that there will be a problem when uploading the code and importing the database on the shared host.
- John
Albin.Net : friendly web development
- John (JohnAlbin)
That helps
Thank you for the info. I managed to find a version of XAMPP that pretty closely matches the PHP and MySQL versions on the shared host, so I think I will be OK. I'm more interested in theming than in hacking the SQL or writing modules anyway! ;)
learn one, teach one, do one
"I have my apache server
"I have my apache server (and DNS) tricked out"
What is your DNS setup? I'm doing the same thing but can't get the IE6/7 in VMWare to see the OSX apache? How do you do it?
suffering too much information
Good Idea
I haven't tried this yet, but as I'm setting up a new development environment on my laptop I will be installing it shortly.
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
learn one, teach one, do one
I think I used that when I
Magdaleine, I think I used that when I set up ie5.5 & ie6 a while back. The only problem I have is minor, in that my ie6 cookies don't work.