How do you test in all browsers?

Mac and early versions of IE are problematic

[wrgvt]

My web site at the moment is built around tables, and times several layers of nesting of tables. A couple weeks ago I started rewriting some of my pages in CSS. I have copies of Firefox, Opera, and IE 6.0 on my main computers, and IE 5.5 on an old computer. My CSS pages display pretty much correctly in these browsers (still a few minor issues). I can't find anyone I know, though, with a Mac or older versions of Explorer. How do I test my new CSS pages in these? Looking in my server logs, Macs and older versions of Explorer make up a few percent of my site's visitors.

[mincklerstraat]

[webmasterworld.com...] (a tutorial by DrDoc and other assorted comments) will be helpful for you for installing multiple versions of ie win on your PC. Linux isn't nearly as hard to install as previously; and the Konqueror browser on Linux lets you check stuff on the same HTML rendering engine that Safari uses (called KHTML). If you're not up for a whole Linux install, you can just download a Knoppix CD Rom ISO and burn it, you just boot with this and you are running Linux without actually having it installed. Then you can go to Konqueror and check that way. Requires rebooting, but that's different from buying a whole new computer.

Unfortunately you won't be able to try out ie5.5 mac, but for the rest it's a good setup.

[vinzzz]

there are some standalone versions of ie for win, but ehm, 5.5 for mac? 5.2 is latest!

see the stats at www.w3schools.com for browsers-use...safari is a good browser for mac-users....so if i were you i wouldnt bother so much (only if you have a customer espially browsing at 5.1 or 5.2 IE/mac

[isitreal]

If the drdoc method doesn't appeal to you, you can just set up an old box with this:

windows 98 version 1 - IE 4
windows 2000 default install - IE 5

your development os - ie 6, plus all other browsers you normally test in that are windows based, since they are all stand alone apps as long as you install them into separate folders, not their default ones. Other browsers are all available from evolt.org

If something works in 5 it's probably going to work in 5.5.

Mac IE you're out of luck currently unless you have a mac, though there are online services that will give you screen shots of your page in all major browsers, I'm not a fan of those for many reasons.

If you keep up the testing box, you can add suse or redhat to it, then run the kde desktop, that gives you konqueror 3.2 kurrently. 3.2 is a bit behind current safaris but it's close enough. knoppix also has 3.2 or 3.15, can't remember which.

[whoisgregg]

There's two reasons you probably don't want to ignore Mac IE 5.5:

1. Mac IE 5.5 is the most horrendous browser. Most web design headaches are in mac IE, as valid code tends to look great (well, similar at least) in all the other mac browsers.
2. There are plenty of mac markets that still use IE over Safari, the education market being one of them.

In addition to the pay-for-screenshot services, you can sometimes network with a mac user here at webmasterworld and ask for them to check specific pages/sites. You can figure out who to sticky with your request by looking at who posts in the Mac Webmaster forum [webmasterworld.com]. (I happen to be one of them, btw.)

5.5 for mac? 5.2 is latest!

Everyone I know calls it 5.5 even though it is technically 5.2.3. I think it's because 5.2 was the revision that brought it in line with the win equivalent 5.5. Not sure though... I do know that trying to call it 5.2 or 5. confuses more people than calling it 5.5. :D

<added>
From another thread, you can learn more about Mac IE 5 CSS bugs:
[macedition.com...]
</added>

[DrDoc]

If something works in 5 it's probably going to work in 5.5.

That is an incorrect assumption. IE5.5 brought with it a wide array of bugs and problems not previously experienced in IE5.0

Everyone I know calls it 5.5 even though it is technically 5.2.3. I think it's because 5.2 was the revision that brought it in line with the win equivalent 5.5.

IE/Mac has always been ahead of the Windows version, not the other way around. The rendering engine in 5.2/Mac is closer to IE/Win 6.0 than 5.5 ;)

[isitreal]

<<< That is an incorrect assumption. IE5.5 brought with it a wide array of bugs and problems not previously experienced in IE5.0

It's not an assumption, it's an observation.

The rendering is close enough from my experience. In general, IE 5.5 is my favorite IE browser, I've never installed IE 6 on my main development box, don't like it, almost every piece of css I've written works ok on 5x, no major differences, obviously there are minor ones, like overflow:auto not working right in 5.0, but it doesn't work right in 6.0 either, only 5.5 had that right, but 5.5 had better css support than 5.0, ergo the conclusion that if it works in 5.0, it's probably going to be ok in 5.5, that's been my experience, your's may be different. However, IE 5, 5.5, and 6 each have unique little bugs, as drdoc notes, so you'd better check in all of them no matter what.

This doesn't say that you shouldn't test any commercial css in all, 4, 5, 5.5, 6, that's necessary. A recent commercial project I did is getting a surprisingly high % IE 4, about 3%, versus .12% Opera, so I know where I'm putting my development time. Also, for those counting, 5% Mozilla/Netscape

And remember, IE 5x mac has zero relation to IE 5x Windows, zero. Nothing you do will work, or that's what you should expect, so if you have a mac audience you'd better pick up a used mac for testing. Next year there will probably be a mac virtual machine for linux.