[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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