Hey,

 

When your designing layouts for your sites how do you go about testing them in old browsers, like IE6 or similar?

 

I am aware that some people design regardless of old browsers and disregard them from testing full stop. To me this doesn't seem professional, in terms of cross browser compatibility/usability.

 

I am lucky enough to have mac and PC access with older browsers on etc.. so i can test across browsers, If i didn't have this access how could i go about it?

 

I am scared that my younger sister may upgrade her IE6 on her PC!! lol

 

Thanks, your methods would be interesting to know.

 

Mark.

no one uses IE5 any more. and I do mean no-one. More people use Lynx than IE5 these days...

 

At any rate, I use browsershots.org

I installed Windows95/98 on a VirtualPC image. Got a copy with every IE version since 3. The Win9x versions boot really fast so testing is quick.

 

As Rich said, no-one really uses IE older than IE6 anymore. And for those that still do; I think it's time to pull the plug. (But I still mess about some times just for the sake of it )

 

If you want to just test IE6 the IE developers maintain an XP VirtualPC image which you can use. It's timebombed so you need to keep downloading a new one every 4 month or so.

 

For Safari 2 and other Mac only application I got myself a second hand Mac Mini which I remote into.

 

Opera is easy as it allows you to install as many version as you like.

 

For Firefox I downloaded the portable versions which allowed me to keep them separate.

I always PM Expat and ask her to check things for me in IE6! cheeky I know! I do post topics on here when I have a amjor issue and there is always someone out there willing to have a look for me. I also use browsershots.org, but that just gives you screen grabs and it's no good for testing functionality.

 

I'm a firm believer that people should always upgrade to the latest browsers and so I don't generally support older browsers at all, but saying that I do have a few corporate clients that have no control over what software they used as this is goverened by their IT departments and so always make sure my sites work in IE6 at least.

 

It's difficult when you work for yourself and only have 1 PC and 1 Mac. I can't get more than one version of IE to run on my PC. When I worked for a company it was great as we were able to keep old machines running old browsers and you could test on every version of browser out there. It's just not feasible when you're one your own.

It's difficult when you work for yourself and only have 1 PC and 1 Mac. I can't get more than one version of IE to run on my PC. When I worked for a company it was great as we were able to keep old machines running old browsers and you could test on every version of browser out there. It's just not feasible when you're one your own.

 

That's why VirtualPC is so good. It's free. All you need is an old copy of windows availible.

I have a laptop and a PC. Laptop's running vista, FF2, and IE7. PC's running XP, FF1.5, and IE6.

 

Luckily I'm one of those designers to whom cross-browser compatability comes naturally (*is lucky*) so testing's not a big issue for me.

That does sound like a very useful piece of luck there Rachael, I could do with some of that!

 

I develop on Mac, test via Parallels Desktop (XP, IE6, FF) and use my old PC to test in IE7. I don't test in Opera, or worry about Linux, or browsers lower than IE6. Once I have more of a handle on CSS layout in general, and common browser issues then I will make more of an effort.

I test on:

 

IE 6 & 7 - Firefox 2.0 - Opera 8 and now Safari for windows.

 

I thoroughly recommend http://browsershots.org/ as it takes screengrabs on a broad range of browsers, just select the checkboxes you want it tested on.

I always PM Expat and ask her to check things for me in IE6! cheeky I know!

 

Hehe. She's not kidding, btw.

 

Since I still have IE6 on my computer, I test in that one and FF2, then depend on all of the good people of WDF with IE7 to tell me what is wrong in that browser. My theory is that, if I can make it work in both FF and IE6 (eek!), IE7 shouldn't have any major issues.

Sorry for double post but you may be interested to know that, http://browsers.evolt.org/ allows you to download standalone versions of IE6 (scroll down to the "Internet Explorer" bit) so you can have it running alongside IE7 - it's what I use and it's great for testing.

 

wow, great response.

 

Its amazing how much effort we designers put into cross browser compatibility!

 

i wasn't aware of browsershots.org, it looks like its going to be very useful!

 

I'm pretty lucky as i work in a company so there are a few pc's which run on IE 6 and have a hamster running a generator in the tower.

 

The only issue that gets me usually is floated div's not aligning correctly, other than that im pretty much like Rachael with luck

browsershots.org is good, but it takes ages to get the results...and I'm very impatient.

Gave browsershots another try tonight after this thread reminded me of it. It did work - eventually... I've never had it work before, guess I haven't been patient enough. Don't get me wrong its good, but its far from ideal. Most of the time I am tweaking a stylesheet minute by minute trying to solve cross browser problems (IE!), so its no use at all for that.

I hate to say this but i only test on the recent firefox,opera and ie. Dont really test for the later versions

in an ideal world, you should only need to test for the latest browsers.

 

if users are too pig-headed or ignorant to upgrade then it is their own damned fault. I sometimes feel like going back to the good old days "This site was designer for IE7/FF2" or similar

 

Of course, in a commercial environment this isn't best practice (pretty close to worst practice).

 

Browsershots isn't great for minute-by-minute adjustments, but it is useful to see if the site needs any adjustment in the first place, for example if you are doing it away from the office. You can just pop the page into browsershots, and by the time you get back to your desk you will know what the problems are without running it through 2 other pc's.

oh definitely, in fact the latest site i was working on had no set specification, until i found out one of the committee from the association was using IE6, so i more or less changed the whole site just so he could view it!

 

Would have been much easier to send him a link to the IE download page, however I don't think they would have deemed that professional.

 

Personally I get more satisfaction if i see my sites work across browsers, but at times it can be a pain in the ass to get it to that stage!

I use:

 

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

 

They're not perfect functionally but from a rendering perspective they're absolutely fine.