So i heard that of the people using IE (about 70% of all browers usage), about half of them are using IE6? So that means about 1/3 of the net population is still using IE6 as of right now. Since some of us have only 1 machine at work, or is convenient to use only 1 machine at home, how do you guys test IE6 when IE7 is also installed? My friend told me it can be done using a free Virtual machine image IE6-XPSP2_VPC.EXE from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en the image already has Windows XP together with IE6. The catch is that it will expire in Sept 2008. (MS will probably release another one later). Then, download Microsoft's Virtual PC for free at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...22-6EB8-4A09-A7F7-F6C7A1F000B5&displaylang=en so the first file will decompress to a folder, like c:\ie6 and the second file will install Virtual PC, and make use of the files in c:\ie6 Do you know of any other method? thanks very much!
The easiest way I've found, is by using Firefox! Sounds dumb, but there's a plugin for IE-6 Viewing. You just click the icon on the bottom right of the page, and you swap between IE6 and FF. I'll get a link, one second. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1419
To be honest I tested few ways and using virtuePC gave me best effects, if you set it right it takes only like 20 seconds to turn on and 5 seconds to turn off on my crappy laptop. It gives accurate rendering too. I will have a look at this Firefox extension. The real question is: is there a way of using IE6 with Firebug? now that would be helpful in debugging. EDIT: This FF extension isn't accurate at all, compare http://smesolutions.co.uk in this extension and on virtualpc or any other online browser screenshot website and you'll see the huge difference.
Multiple IE is amazing if you are not running Vista. The screen shot sites I have used aren't the best. They don't really account for functionality.
I use a standalone IE6 browser although I can't remember where I downloaded it from... The only problem is that it reads the IE7 conditional comments so you have to swap the information around... IE6 commands in the IE7 file... obviously change back around when the site goes live... Works well enough for me though
I have IE 6, safari and firefox 2 on my machine, if the design works in all of these browsers, then it should work fine in IE 7
Hi winterheat!! : ) I'm still using Tredosoft Multiple IEs... it's fairly accurate (I can sometimes test against a native IE6 with a coworker's machine, and I test against the Fake IE64Linux). It has two problems though--- it can't deal with Flash properly, and you can't test Javascript-- it will Java-da-script like IE7. It's useful purely as a rendering tester. I haven't heard of virtual PC-- does that work for XP? I specifically bought an XP license for my new laptop because I needed Tredosoft IE's which, as someone already said, do not (yet) work on Vista. Of course, I don't want Vista for other reasons, so it works out : ) Right now I'm having trouble getting two versions of FF on a single Linux machine-- they store their libraries in the same places, so having FF2 (which rocks) and FF3 (which I hate) on the same machine is a problem. I may be able to let the virtualised Windows have FF3 while Ubuntu has FF2... And I was able to keep my old Opera 9.27 on the werk Windows machine while also getting the 9.5x version, and while they look the same on valid sites like I write, there's definitely a difference on other sites. Huge.
I upgraded to Vista (though deathshadow and Dan Schulz seem to have a problem with the word "upgrade") so tredosoft doesn't work for me any more, so I just installed XP in a virtual machine using VirtualBox (which works on Linux too). Its a great piece of free software, allowing you to run other operating systems inside your operating system, to save you installing them. The Linux version seems to have a little extra feature called seamless mode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virtualbox15seamless.png
That's because it's a downgrade. Lowered functionality, little or no stability, narrowed hardware compatability, and goof assed eye candy chewing CPU, GPU and electricity that nobody asked for... This is a upgrade HOW exactly? VirtualBox is a good free VM for all OS, though it's reliant like most SUN software on Java being present (I have a paranoid distaste for Java). Some other VM's to consider: Parallels is best on the Mac if you can afford it, though the PC version is decent enough. VMWare is very powerful but tends to hijack the host OS too much. Microsoft Virtual PC is free, but their latest release is buggy and unstable - hell, all the microsoft releases since they bought it from connectix have had REDUCED functionality compared to the older versions. Oh, and there's QEMU, which on it's own is too complex for it's own good and needs something to wrap it for 'casual users'. Any of those will let you install a legacy OS inside them on which you can test older software (or even software under development) without risking the host OS.
Hey actually since my XP came with a native IE6, I'd like to keep it-- esp as I'm starting out with Javva-da-script, with all its IE headaches. I hope I can get Tredosoft's IE5.x by itself (I don't test lower) and maybe a standalone IE7? That would be nice.
Ah, those are the evolt ones. They were one of the first, but apparently the Tredosoft ones render more correctly.
Screw virtual PC and all this rubbish. If Microsoft recommends it it's obviously the WRONG way of doing things. http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
IEtester shows a lot of promise - but it's just too buggy and too limited, not suprising given it's still at alpha.