[thelist] Installing browsers for testing?

kasimir-k evolt at kasimir-k.fi
Mon Nov 6 03:21:57 CST 2006


Micky Hulse scribeva in 06/11/2006 1:52:
> I have seen a few different sites that talk about installing multiple 
> versions of IE[01], and Firefox[02]... all seem a bit of work and 
> obviously hackish... but if that is what it takes, I am willing to give 
> it a shot.
> 
> Anyway, what do you do to test on older versions of IE/Firefox/other 
> browsers/platforms (besides online services like browsercam.com)?

With IE it's a bad idea to run multiple versions as the versions will 
share some components, thus you won't get "real" older versions.

The best and easiest way is to use a virtual machine. Microsoft's 
Virtual PC[1] is free, check out also VMWare[2] and Parallels[3]. YOu 
might also find Wikipedia's VM comparison[4] interesting.

With virtual machines you can easily have many OS/browser combinations. 
Eg. you could have Win98 with IE4 and NS4.7, one W2K with IE5.5 and 
other with IE6 etc.

.k


[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx
[2] http://www.vmware.com/
[3] http://www.parallels.com/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines



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