Managing multiple browsers

Which ones?

[photon]

Good web design depends on sites being viewable in a wide variety of browsers, either as designed or in a gracefully degraded form.

How many different browsers do you keep on your system for testing? I know that (without partitions) only one version of IE can be on a given machine. If you keep Netscape (or Opera or Konqueror or whatever) on your machine, do you keep multiple versions or just one? In any case, which version(s)?

Also, what kinds of conflicts (if any) do you face with keeping multiple browsers and how do you resolve them?

Thanks.

[edit_g]

I seem to remember an earlier thread about this but I can't find it...

In my Browser Zoo I keep:

Mozilla (whichever is current)
IE 6
IE 5.5 (for testing, on an old laptop)
Netscape 4.7
Opera 6.5
Lynx (for text browsing and UA spoofing)

Feed them well and they will all live together happily. :)
(i.e. no conflicts)

[edited by: edit_g at 4:56 pm (utc) on Feb. 5, 2003]

[BlobFisk]

On my machine (Win 2k Pro) I keep:

IE 6
Mozilla 1.0
Opera 6
Netscape 4.74
Netscape 6

I have 2 test machines (both Win 95) on which I have:

IE4 and IE5
AOL 7
Netscape 4.04 and Netscape 4.74

I've had no problems with multiple Netscape's - but you need to use a different profile for Mozilla and Netscape 6 if you want them to run at the same time.

[g1smd]

Internet Exploiter 5.5
Netscape Navigator 4.8
Mozilla Browser v. 1.1

[photon]

I should have also asked: why those particular browsers/versions? Do you base that decision on what your logs show, or some other reason?

[korkus2000]

why those particular browsers/versions?

Those browsers pretty much cover the differences your HTML will be rendered. You could also use your log files.

I use
Netscape 4.5 - pretty much shows what netscape 4 users will see. Big difference from most browsers.
Netscape 6 - See how newer versions of netscape work with the code.
IE 5 - covers what most IE users will see. I try to not use code beyond IE 5 at this time.
Opera 6 - Lets me see what Opera users see
Mozilla 1 - to see what browsers based of mozilla see
AOL 7 - Gives you an idea of what AOL people see.

Lynx is good to make sure text browsers can view the site without problems.