Email conversation
| From | Mark Gibbens |
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| To | Me |
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| Subject | You may want to expand your "multiple IE platform" advice? |
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| Date | 15 December 2006 10:26 |
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Hi Tarquin, Nice site :)
You might want to expand the advice you offer about web development
platforms for testing multiple Internet Explorer versions at the
bottom of this page:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/ie7.html
For developers that use Linux, a combination of 'IEs 4 Linux' (IE5-6)
and WinXP/IE7 under a virtualisation package (Win4Lin, VMWare, Qemu)
can work really well.
In terms of my workflow, I tend to run Konqueror, Opera, Firefox and
IEs 5-6 as native Linux applications for early-stage CSS development .
Then for more detailed testing I can fire up WinXP under
virtualisation (I use Win4Lin, though it's a bit slow on my box) to
check things in IE7.
I admit, rather shamefacedly, that I tend to exclude version 4
browsers from my CSS work now, or at least give them only very plain
stylesheets.
I don't know how good this workflow would be for JavaScript
development, but perhaps you may want to share some of these newer
options anyway.
Many thanks,
Mark Gibbens.
| From | Me |
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| To | Mark Gibbens |
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| Subject | Re: You may want to expand your "multiple IE platform" advice? |
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| Date | 19 December 2006 10:00 |
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Mark,
> For developers that use Linux, a combination of 'IEs 4 Linux' (IE5-6)
> and WinXP/IE7 under a virtualisation package (Win4Lin, VMWare, Qemu)
> can work really well.
Indeed, and that is something worth a mention at least.
> Then for more detailed testing I can fire up WinXP under
> virtualisation (I use Win4Lin, though it's a bit slow on my box) to
> check things in IE7.
Personally, I am always worried about the limitations of the emulated
versions - those running on a (not-an)emulator like Wine. Simply put,
Windows is strange. It does strange things when IE is integrated with it.
Fonts and font sizes never work the same (so precision CSS does not work),
scripting and ActiveX can be different to a real install, there are odd
security prompts in IE, and other strange things like that. The Win4Lin or
VMWare approach copes with these better than Wine does, at least, so I
always prefer this approach.
> I admit, rather shamefacedly, that I tend to exclude version 4
> browsers from my CSS work now, or at least give them only very plain
> stylesheets.
Nothing to be shamefaced about. Very few browsers are still stuck as 4th
generation (pocket IE would be an obvious exception). Those that are have
now been replaced by better browsers. It is text based browsers and
accessibility software like screen readers that need the care and attention.
But in any case, having a simple fallback for browsers that are not so
capable is the right approach.
Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/