Testing earlier version browsers

How can I?

[Filipe]

I recently made what I thought was a killer CSS layout. As soon as I sent it to someone else to look at, they said, "Everything's overlapping. It looks bad." I was running all version 6 browsers, and he was running IE 5.5. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So I thought to myself... "How can I test earlier version browsers? I don't even think I can get IE 4 or 5, much less run it alongside later versions."

How do I go about testing for older browsers? Do I need a separate computer for that?

[BlobFisk]

Yep - IE only allows one version of itself on a machine. You could partition your drive and use a dual boot setup, but Jatar_k's advice of using other machines is far more straightforward.

(edited by: BlobFisk at 10:49 am (utc) on May 16, 2002)

[jammy]

well, you *could* dual/triple/quad boot... but that's a real pain to save work, reboot, wait for it to load up, test site, make notes, reboot blah blah....

VMWare is superb for this - it puts a thin software layer between your hardware and a "virtual machine". I have two Windows 98, linux redhat 7.2 and a win2k system, all running simultaneously on my Win2k desktop in virtual environments. the OS's run fine and fast.

i can "resume" win98 in 1 second flat. it can connect to my server on my linux virtual machine, or my Win2k real machine. you can share files through each OS with file sharing - it really does the job well!

as for the different IE/netscape browsers, once you have a fresh Win95 system installed in a VM - you can copy the Virtual harddisk just like you would a file (and it only occupies the same space that the files in the OS take up). so you can copy Win95 with IE3, multiple times and then install v4, v5, v5.5 and v6 in each respective copy of the OS.

and you can get VMware for Linux too - so you can run any Windows or Linux within Linux.

oh and your comment that you can only run one version of IE on one machine is, i think, incorrect - you can if you state when installing (advanced settings), that you want to keep assosiations with previous IE version to allow two different versions on the same system. I never tried this, but i think it worked.

[dstanovic]

jammy,

No, you cannot install an older version of IE in the same environment.

[Macguru]

I do run multiple windows versions simultanously, and can check the same file in any version of windows IE without rebooting, on my Mac.

[Lost]

Try going to Browser Photo at [netmechanic.com...]

I've used their service a number of times now...they take virtual 'photos' or screengrabs of 16 different browser/OS/resolution configurations including IE4, Opera 5, NS 4 and Web TV. It's not a bad deal at $15 if you're doing webdesign.

[bufferzone]

take a look at this thread, im might give you a usable lead

[webmasterworld.com...]