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 was wondering if anyone knew of any alternatives to IE Tester. I am getting some differences between my actual XP IE6 vm and my IETester. So I am looking for something that is a little more accurate than IETester.
Unfortunately the options are somewhat limited.
You can use VMWare with a Windows XP (or lower) install to test IE6
You can use VirtualPC (free) with a (free) XP/IE6 image from Microsoft
You used to be able to use Spoon.net to run just the browser via a plugin in Firefox/whatever
You can try MultipleIE's but IE6 will break and not work if IE8 is installed locally
Or if you are really lucky, you can DROP IE6 support!
I use expression super preview. It's good for layout bugs, but unfortunately it is useless for script testing
If you just have the one page you can use Browser Shots for free or sign up for a small fee. They have been very good in the past when I have experienced the same issues with IE Tester not being 100% correct mainly with JavaScript problems.
I'll try to be short and clean. I did website for friend, although she says some people complain about pink quote field to cover the text area, I've tried this on different PCs, browsers but haven't seen this kind of issue. So I was thinking maybe that old IE or something?
Here's websites link: http://www.zlobekbambino.pl
Thanks in advance
I would try using a service such as Adobe's Browser Lab or Browser Shots to test the site in various browsers to see which is causing problems. You can then try to work out how to fix it.
Assuming you have a Windows PC, you can test with all versions of IE by installing IETester. It's a very usefull program that allows you to run all versions of IE in tabs in the same window.
Obviously though, it only works on a Windows PC, so if you're on a Mac you won't be able to use it. In that case, http://www.browsershots.org allows you to download screenshots from virtually any browser ever released. The downside of that is that you only get a static screenshot, so not much use for testing dynamic content, but still a useful tool.
I have a Linux box. How do I see how my HTML pages look as rendered in Microsoft Internet Explorer? How do I test JavaScript functionality in Internet Explorer?
I don't want to install a VM and a copy of the Windows OS.
Your best friend as a Linux web developer is IEs4Linux, which uses Wine to run different versions of Internet Explorer.
Check out this page to see how your page will look across browsers and OS'
http://browsershots.org/
To actually interact with your web site though I would suggest something like Wine or a VM like Xen.
Also see this link: How to install internet explorer on Ubuntu or see this page IEs4Linux.
I use Linux at work and do web development that has to support Internet Explorer 6 (and later) and Firefox 2 (and later).
IE4Linux is not really good enough for properly testing Internet Explorer browser rendering as it doesn't work exactly as Internet Explorer does in Windows. You could use something like browsershots, but I would recommend running Windows in a VM and test using that for Internet Explorer testing. I've done that for awhile and it works great as long as you have a spare 512 MB RAM for Windows XP.
Another service similiar to browsershots, but faster, is IE NetRenderer. Otherwise, if you have a copy of Windows lying around, why not use a virtual machine? Suns VirtualBox is nice enough.
Probably your best bet for accurate rendering without paying for a Windows license is using one of the MS provided virtual machines. Below are some links on tutorials for setting up the VMs using VirtualBox.
http://blog.philipbrown.id.au/2009/03/internet-explorer-application-compatibility-vpc-images-under-virtualbox/
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/installing-windows-7-on-a-virtual-machine/
I've used VirtualBox and these images quite a bit and it works well, the only downside is you have to reinstall every quarter because the images expire.
I agree that browsershots.org is a great place to start, but it only provides a screenshot. If you're using JavaScript or jQuery and need to see how see how things appear when you interact with your page in Internet Explorer (practically any version from Internet Explorer 5 and up), crossbrowsertesting.com is an excellent resource.
Is anyone writing applications specifically to take advantage of google chrome?
Are there any enterprise users who are considering using it as the standard browser?
Yes, I have started to pay very good attention to Google Chrome for my applications. Recent analytics show that between 6%-15% of my users are accessing my applications (varies between 6 to 15 in different applications) on Chrome. And, this number looks on an upward trend.
Thus, I can't really ignore it for testing right now.
As far as taking it as a standard goes, thats a long way off. I still have to test for IE6! :( Though, we have been planning to start using features like Gears (inbuilt in Chrome - downloadable elsewhere) once Chrome crosses the 25% mark. Thats when I believe that we will be looking at Chrome to be our preferred browser. I hope that we have Chrome 1.0+ by then! ;)
I switched to Chrome and haven't looked back except for the occasional site which doesn't work properly, forcing me to load it in Firefox. All my existing web applications work fine on it, and I'm using it for primary testing on my current development project.
I'm not actually targeting chrome, but I have added chrome to my browsers to test sites on. I've found some odd quirks in this product where some plugins cause the browser to hang, or run really slow in some environments, but they are still in beta in active development. But I definately now make sure sites I work on render well in chrome, as well as firefox, latest versions of IE, safari, Konquerer and opera. I usually check out how it looks on lynx as well, that helps me catch "un-alternated text" in images. Yeah, I know that isn't a word, but some people will understand what I'm saying.
Because chrome uses the webkit to render HTML, you can be assured if it works in safari, it'll work under chrome, however it's rendering engine isn't up to scratch quite yet. I think writing applications that take advantage of it is similar to writing iPhone applications, remember chrome is expected to be adopted by android to make it similar to iPhone. That way it pretty much takes advantage of all those iPhone apps.
Would I install it as the browser of choice? not yet - but i'll certainly work on valid web pages that will render across all browsers.
One of our major customers has outlawed Chrome because it installs on the C drive without asking. They deploy a standard image with a small C drive and large D drive so they can easily re-clone the system part of the image on C without destroying the client's personal files on D. Most software allows you to choose the install directory. Anything that violates this is disallowed, and they're a big enough company to have some weight with most vendors.
We have enough headaches trying to support
Firefox
Two versions of IE which have their own iffy bugs
Safari
I'm not sure why we continue to support Safari. Most of our users (corporate) use IE6 or IE7. We try to make sure that things work in both of those.
Maybe not for programming purposes but Chrome w/ Google Reader makes for the most powerful RSS reader. Can handle up to 1500 feeds w/ performance still ok, managing subscriptions still functioning.
I'm using it on my work machine, but that's about it. It's been stable for me, and I like the barebones UI. I'll still switch to Firefox for the web developer extensions however.
I'm liking some of GoogleChrome- the Start page with your 9 most recent is the winner for me. The interface takes a little getting used to, but the speed is impressive, especially with Gmail.
However, it glitches with Java, which rules it out for serious work at the moment. I use FireFox mostly and have Chrome for the "other" websites at work.
I'm considering using GWT on an intranet project and considering suggesting to the users that use Chrome to take advantage of the enhanced Javascript performance. Any AJAX-heavy app would be a great candidate to target Chrome.
At my company, we're not targeting it, but we're definitely paying attention to it. My boss is using it as his primary browser, and I have implemented browser detection for it in our scripts in case we ever to need to target it for some reason.
Chrome has the .png opacity bug where the transparent parts of the .png are a solid color if you try to transition the opacity from 0 to 1. In IE7 the opaque parts are black, and in Chrome, they are white. Today, I decided to go ahead and account for this bug in my JavaScript. I don't really test sites on Chrome that often, but I am actually using it for almost all of my browsing.
I will target Chrome as soon as a stable Linux and OSX client is available.
Targeting Chrome/Chromium right now, I think is like targeting Konqueror web browser. It will get popular, but you should wait to a more stable beta, and/or some Linux and OS X client.
My website statistics shows 3.xx % visitors using Chrome which arrived just few weeks back. And Opera is only 4.xx % which has been around for several years.
Easily you can see that rate at which Chrome is picking up.
You can see how easily Google takes over all areas of your computing world and personal world too.
Since Chrome uses Webkit, it has the same rendering engine and DOM support as Safari (not necessarily the same revision of Webkit though). By testing in Safari, you can generally get by without worrying about Chrome. Any differences you find are probably just bugs that you should file on instead of work around.
However, because Chrome uses a different JS engine, there may be a few incompatibilities with Safari. So, if you're doing anything with JS, you might as well fire up Chrome and see if there's anything obviously wrong.
Generally though, you don't target browsers, you target rendering engines (with their associated DOM support and JS engines).
I am using Google Chrome, so far all the web apps I have work fine in it with no modifications.
No.
Why help Google further build an evil empire? In this particular case it is so obvious that they do not care about users but only obsessed with gathering usage info.
It's not any major player yet