[thelist] Browser testing on Windows 98 and Linux (Unix)

Aylard JA (James) jaylard at equilon.com
Thu Oct 19 12:01:04 CDT 2000


John,

> I've had no trouble installing legacy versions 
> of Netscape and several other popular browsers on the PC, but can't 
> seem to install older IEs. Is this because Internet Explorer is so 
> tightly integrated with Windows 98?

	This has been a developer pet-peeve with IE for some time. Starting
with IE3, Internet Explorer is highly version-exclusive, and typically only
one version of IE is possible on a given PC. The exceptions: you can run IE2
and prior versions (if you want to) on the same PC as another version of IE,
and you can run IE4 on the same PC as IE5 or IE5.5 so long as IE4 is in
"compatibility" mode (which you have to select as an installation option for
IE5 or IE 5.5 -- and IE4 must already be installed).
	AFAIK, your only other options are: create multiple, bootable
partitions on your PC, and install a different version of IE on each one;
use multiple PCs with a different version of IE installed on each (or,
obviously, a combination of multiple PCs and multiple, bootable partitions);
use OS emulation software, such as VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/), which
allows you to install and run multiple virtual OSes on a single WintNT/2000
or Linux PC.
	A further caveat: older versions of IE will not necessarily install
on newer versions of Windows. For instance, if you try to install IE3 on
Windows 2000, it won't let you. I'm not sure exactly what the allowable mix
of OS and browser versions is, though.

hth,
James Aylard




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