[thelist] development browsers..
Seb Barre
sebastien at oven.com
Thu Oct 19 13:43:46 CDT 2000
At 10:34 AM 10/19/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>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).
We've been having discussions back and forth here at work (and in other
circles) about the feasibility of putting together a 'development browser'
package, which would incorporate all the various DLLs for each version of
IE, from 5.5 down to 3.x, and allow hot-switching of the rendering engine
to test for older browsers.. Possibly using a pre-made front-end like
NeoPlanet (which uses the IE rendering engine already).
I wonder why this was never done by Microsoft, since one of their strong
points is developer support (no matter what you love to bitch about
regarding MS, you can't argue that). It seems that since all the IE stuff
is pluggable system DLLs that can be embedded in other programs, it
wouldn't be that difficult to make (in relative terms).
When I have more time I am planning on exploring this idea in more
detail. If anyone is handy with Microsoft MFC or Win32 programming in
general, I'd love to hear from you.. There is no mailing list as of yet or
anything really organized for this project, but we've been getting alot of
interest in it..
--- -- -
Seb Barre - sebastien at oven.com
OVEN Digital Toronto
Work: 416-595-9750 x 222
Mobile: 416-254-5078
http://www.oven.com/
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