Testing for Internet Explorer (Especially IE6)
Like most responsible web developers, I have a whole bunch of web browsers installed on my machine: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Chrome, hell, at one point I had a Windows version of Linx! Now that’s all well and good, but what about different VERSIONS of the same browser. I mean, there is a pretty significant difference between IE6 and IE7, and unfortunately, a large number of the uninformed population still use IE6. Sadly, MS doesn’t make this easy for you since you can only have ONE version of Internet Explorer installed on Windows, right?
Well, there are a few ways around this problem. The first is get a plug-in or service that sends you a screenshot of your page viewed in X browser. This isn’t a great means of testing because viewing structure is only part of it. What about elements that are interactive? It also takes a few minutes to create the screenshot, so that’s pretty time consuming and annoying too.
Another option, and a better one than the screenshot, is to install VMware or something similar so you can boot up another copy of Windows (or some other OS) where another version of IE is installed. I don’t like this option either if the only reason for creating this setup is to test in IE. On the plus side though, you see how sites work on different operating systems, which is kind of nice.
Now for ones I like a lot…
Before upgrading to Vista, I had multiple IEs installed on my machine for testing purposes. This was a great and easy setup on XP since it essentially is the browser in a standalone form. The problem I had after upgrading was that IE6 and below are not compatible with Vista.
That’s when a friend and fellow web developer introduced me to IE Tester. This piece of software is AWESOME! Works on Vista (as well as XP) and emulates IE5.5, IE6, IE7, and IE8 beta. It’s currently in version 0.2.3, but seems to work quite well for my needs. Best part about this is that though there are some known bugs, it’s still being actively developed and improved upon. Go on, tell all your friends!