in IE you can view pages as previous rendering engine. You use 9 and view as 8,7,6.
If this possible in Firefox? I'm using FF7 and I want to see how a website displays in say 3.6.
Is this possible or am I going to need multiple versions installed?
The answer is "No, you're going to have to install multiple versions."
FF doesn't have a compatiblity view like IE does. (If the example of IE is anything to go by, this is probably a good thing)
Firefox can have multiple versions installed on the same machine without too much trouble, but if you want to make things even easier, you might want to try the Utilu collection which is an installer that can install multiple FF versions on your machine at once.
Related
Recently users of my website complained about the lack of support to IE6\7.
Is there an offline tool to test if a page-HTML isn't compatible with a specif browser and where is the problem?
Where can I find a list of things I need to be aware of in order to support IE6?
Update: The problems the users describe are in the UI, <Div>are not in the right places and that kind of problems, not JavaScript issues.
I can't force the users to upgrade theirs browsers.
IE6 is an ancient browser. Tell people who complain about lack of support that it's no longer supported and they should upgrade.
There is no "syntax checking" tool to find all incompatibilities, because the problems are not in syntax but how it's interpreted. There is no way around visual testing I'm afraid.
Here are some interesting SO questions on the topic:
One fix for all IE6 problems
How are programmers tackling ie6 bugs these days?
Running Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on the same machine
IE tester is useful for testing across version of internet explorer. It may not tell you what is wrong but you will at least be able to see / verify what users are reporting.
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
I have some offer about this for you :
Try to use Jquery more,because Jquery is compatible with most browsers
there are 3 useful addons for Mozilla : Firebug , Web Developer , IE tab
IE 9 has a developer windows that you can change your page standard into IE 8 or 7
Use syntax liek this :
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="Styles/ie-fix.css" />
maybe this is useful dude for you :)
If your users are complaining about IE6, you should give support to IE, thats theory. BUT, if possible do as google has been doing for years, if the user is using IE6/7 or lower show some links to download newer browsers and tell them that their browser is too old.
You can use a seperate stylesheet for IE.
There is a third party software named Utilu. Utilu IE Collection contains multiple standalone versions of the browser Internet Explorer, which can be used at the same time. It has more than 10 versions of IE. But its used for viewing the web pages. This software also has firefox and chrome collections.
I'm developing a very simple web site, with only one web page, but i need the one single page to look as it should in all the browsers. Now, for testing purposes, i have installed a bunch of web browsers on my windows 7 machine (FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Netscape etc.) and after doing some markup changes, i've got the same looking webpage on all the browsers.
Now the question is, does "the way" a browser renders a web-page depend on the operating system the browser is running on? Should I install linux (or other os) and test again or it will just be fine?
You should definitely be testing sites cross-platform, others may disagree, but the rendering is definitely different.
In addition to base-rendering, you may also be missing fonts, have alternate fonts with the same name, have anti-aliasing enabled/disabled on different platforms/configurations and much more.
To see exactly what I mean, on a base install of Windows 7 with Firefox 5, OSX with Firefox 5 and Linux with Firefox 5, when using the font 'Arial' or 'Verdana', you will clearly see the differences, even if those fonts do exist on all platforms.
On top of the differences you'd see above, even your positioning could be out if you're using non-absolute values (hell, even if you are using absolute values such as px it could be out!), so it's always best practice to check your sites cross-platform, it's as important as checking cross-browser, in my opinion.
Even if the same fonts exist on different OS they might look different.
So yes if you want to be sure that the page look satisfactional on the OS you should test..
As rudi_visser said, you should be doing cross-platform testing. It's a bit of a bother, but absolutely worth it.
You can start by using a service like browsershots.org to quickly check if your site looks ok. To check older versions of IE, Microsoft provides some virtual machine images you can run in Virtual PC to really test the sites. Alternatively, there's this site which is like browsershots.org, only faster and IE-only. Please note, that screenshot services are no substitute for actually testing the site on a certain platform/browser, but it's a quick way to see if something's working at all.
I would definitely recommend checking your site in the older versions of IE, since IE has a rich history of, well, not working quite right. IE9 (which I assume you're using) is a big improvement, but a lot of people are still on versions 6-8. Since IE6 was around for ~9 years without major changes, IE 7, 8 & 9 have each had a lot of catching-up to do, so they're all very different.
As for other browsers, their rendering is more consistent across versions, but they may not be consistent across platforms. Again as rudi_visser said, elements might shift around, and especially text can look different. For instance, Mac OS X uses a different font-smoothing technique from Windows, so a line of text may appear longer/shorter, bolder/lighter from one to the other. A cross-platform browser like Firefox will use the OS' font-rendering, so even though the browser's the same on the different platforms, it can still look different. (The exception is Safari on Windows, which, I think, insists on using Mac-like font-smoothing instead of Windows' own).
I currently only have macs for development. My site looks good in the Chrome, safari and firefox but not in IE 8. Normally I'd say too bad, use a proper browser, but that is probably not going to work with my user base. Are there ways to emulate IE 8 on the mac?
BTW if somebody wants to have a look: here is the site.
In IE 8 only the 1 first column is displayed. In chrome or firefox I don't see any warnings, apart from some javascript warnings which I fixed locally (but not on world wide web yet).
Install VirtualBox (it's free and good) or another virtualizer (VMWare, Parallels)
Convert and use one of these Microsoft VirtualPC VHDs
Test
The only way I know to do this is to run Windows with a program like Parallels and use IE that way.
I would recommend running Windows 7 and IE 9. IE 9 is not only a competent web browser, it can render pages as IE 7 or IE 8 by using the included developer tools.
Use VirtualBox or VMware with a VM from Microsoft: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/
"Test Microsoft Edge (EdgeHTML) and versions of IE8 through IE11 using free virtual machines you download and manage locally."
Old answer from 2012:
There is CrossOver (proprietary $51). It "allows many Windows-based applications to run on Mac OS X using a compatibility layer". It is based on Wine.
It works OK (JavaScript + Flash). They provide automatic installation for Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
For Internet Explorer 8 one more step is required to get what they call a CrossTie.
You can also try WineBootler (free and based on Wine too) but it does not work very well (no JavaScript support).
I'm working on a large site and starting on browser compatibility next week. Just had a glance in some different browsers to have so idea of whats ahead of me and i noticed differences in FF3.5 vs FF3.
The site has been built in FF3.5/IE8. So I'm wondering if there are know issues between the two FF versions? A quick google search returned me nothing.
Regards,
Denis
Of course there are differences. Many bugs were fixed, many features implemented.
There's a list of new features in 3.5 on MDC: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers#For_web_site_and_application_developers
...and you can get the list of all changes from bugzilla.mozilla.org, but that would be pointless, since probably only small part of them affect your app.
I think you should just try testing your app in 3.0.
didn't saw any differences between FF 3.5 and 3.0
In some rare cases you can see differences between 2.0 & 3.5 for example you want to change appearance of upload file control, but for this example differences between different browser families are more evident.
In our company we use only latest version of FF for slicing work also because generally most of FF users (80%) have upgrade their browser in first month of version release
how is the best way to be able to simulate ie6 in my machine to see what user experience these users get.
do i have to install ie6 or is there some other way to simulate it?
Create a virtual machine with XP and IE6. Microsoft has downloads that make it easy to do this for various OS/browser combinations.
IE Tester: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
You can also install multiple ie by tredosoft: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
You can install Virtual PC and use an image with IE6 that you can download here.
Microsoft is developing a tool called SuperPreview to view different browser renderings in the same program, that seems to be nearing the final release. There is a beta that you can download, but it only supports IE8 and IE8 in compatibility mode so far.
If you are happy with static rendering, than browsershots might be a good idea.
If not, I'd suggest to set up an old xp in a virtual machine.
You can download a standalone version of IE6 from here: http://browsers.evolt.org/?ie/win32/standalone
It's not perfect, but it lets you run IE6 alongside whatever browser you have installed, without the two interfering with each other too much.
You have to install IE6 if you want a decent test.
See Running Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on the same machine
The best option is to use a VM, as tvanfosson says.
Another good option if your able to deploy your site on to the internet is to use browserpool
Adobe Browserlab is also a handy (and quick compared to browsershots et. al) tool to get snapshots of what your site looks like in various browsers. Obviously not as good as actually installing IE... but useful nonetheless