Previous to my current laptop, I had Windows XP for my computer, and because of this I could always install IE6 without a problem. A problem arose when I needed to install IE6 on Vista because the two are not compatible. Being the responsible developer I am; I didn’t want to completely abandon IE6 as there is still a big enough market share using it. Currently W3Schools has them still at 20% and IE7 at 27%.
For this reason, I searched the net for “IE 6 on windows”, “how to get IE6 on windows”, etc.. but never came up with a solution. I finally gave up and figured the only way to test was to physically go to an XP Computer and test it.
Not long after this, I came across a solution that someone had in a screencast. If I am not mistaken it was “Jeffery Way”. He writes articles, and creates screencasts on the ThemeForest.net blog. The program I saw him using was IETester.
IETester is a free web browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE8 beta 2, IE7, IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP. I immediately gave it a try and have been quite impressed ever since. It has made my cross-browser compatibility that much easier.
I will also quickly mention another browser tool. The website, browsershots.org allows you to get screenshots in your website on many platforms, browsers, and screen sizes.
Got any cross-browser compatibility tools? Let me know!
Brenelz Web Solutions
2 Comments
Just get a Virtual PC image of XP SP3 with IE6.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
Since the image only lasts a month it might be better to create your own image (if you can).
Using XP with IE7-standalone is nicer though.
IEtester is good. But BIG problem I have is that it does not yet allow you to View the source.
That too me is critical since they are only offering half the equation. If you test in say IE6 and see that it doesn’t display riht, you can’t get the HTML and CSS to review it to troubleshoot.