NYCPHP Meetup

[Tim Lieberman]

On Jul 27, 2008, at 4:46 PM, Dan Cech wrote:

> John Campbell wrote:
>> How do most people even do IE 6 testing?  As far as I can tell, there
>> is no legal means to test IE6 on a mac or linux.
>
> Under windows I've had good luck with MultipleIEs [1], for Linux  
> there is IEs4 Linux [2].
>
> The easiest route is probably to keep a Windows machine around  
> running IE7, IE6 (via MultipleIEs), Firefox, Safari and Opera.   
> You'll still run into issues that only raise their heads in older  
> versions, but you'll have the major bases covered.
>
> Dan
>
> [1] http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
> [2] http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page

The best way to test IE is in windows.

If you're doing web stuff, most of your users will be on windows, so  
you have to run windows.

My solution, which works quite well: VirtualBox (http:// 
www.virtualbox.org), is a free Virtual machine.  A couple of small  
VMs running under MacOS as the host operating system (you can run  
VirtualBox on linux too) let me test in both IE6 and IE7.  I figured  
out how to do it when my (non-virtual) windows machine died.  It  
actually works quite well.  I suppose the multipleIE setup could work  
too, but it seemed wonky last time I tried.  So now I just have to  
virtual windows boxes, one running IE6, another running 7.

Yes, this means paying for a copy of XP.  I hate to do it,  
personally, but if you're in this business, it's a necessary evil.

-Tim