Comments on: Everything you need to know about browser testing

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:53:51 +0000

Thanks for the information Barney. I wasn’t aware of VirtualBox until now but that definitely looks like the best solution.

Just downloading now and going to give them a whirl.

By: Barney

Barney — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:21:13 +0000

Hiya,

A bit late to the party, but thought I’d through in my FUD:

MultipleIEs is not reliable. Superseding IE versions use the same dll, and MultipleIE, while better than many emulation tools, is still emulation at the end of the day. As a front-end developer for huge elaborate production sites full of legacy code, I have had plenty of occasions of testers reporting back from MultipleIEs on bugs that A) appear fixed in MultipleIE 6 but still occur on a real IE6 and B) bugs that cannot be reproduced using any ‘real’ browser. I don’t have any documented proof to give you that doesn’t rely on private code, but if I do find test-case evidence I will be sure to come back with it. Honestly though, don’t rely on this hacky and unrepresentative halfway house for production sites.

For me the only real option is VirtualBox [http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads] and Microsoft’s free Windows + IE6 disk image [http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&displaylang=en#filelist]

This is dirt simple to set up, completely free, completely reliable, and completely legal. VMWare are good for high-end elaborate high-spec virtualization solutions, but for simple non-techie desktop virtualisation, VirtualBox reigns.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:32:07 +0000

Nitecore, I think you’ll find that’s because IE has an option to make the font clear. Personally I find that this option makes the font blurry and much prefer the way that other browsers display fonts crisp.

Regardless of this preference though, there’s nothing you can do about it from a designers point of view and you probably shouldn’t want to as people using Firefox are used to seeing text that way.

By: Nitecore

Nitecore — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:53:48 +0000

For some reason my site always looks a bit off in Firefox.

The text just doesn’t look as clean as when viewed in IE.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:25:19 +0000

Great post.

I had no idea it was possible to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer and have even resorted to using multiple computers in the past.

Downloading the Trendsoft software now

By: Linkit 03.5. - 11.5. | Valontuoja

Linkit 03.5. - 11.5. | Valontuoja — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:02:40 +0000

[...] Dave Woods – Freelance Web Designer UK » Everything you need to know about browser testing Cross browser testing is something every web designer and developer should consider before they even create one line of code. But how should you go about it? What browsers should you test? and what tools are there that can make browser testing easier? [...]

By: The Yay Factor: Brain-Twitter interface » iheni :: making the web worldwide

The Yay Factor: Brain-Twitter interface » iheni :: making the web worldwide — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:53:39 +0000

[...] Everything you need to know about browser testing- some quick tips on cross-browser testing, not forgetting YUI’s graded browser support. [...]

By: 網站製作學習誌 » [Web] 連結分享

網站製作學習誌 » [Web] 連結分享 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:36:01 +0000

[...] Everything you need to know about browser testing [...]

By: David

David — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:54:12 +0000

I usually submit a diagnostic page to http://browsershots.org/ Generally tells me what I need to know!

By: Janko

Janko — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:21:01 +0000

Nice reading. Personally, I prefer virtual machines because I already use them for dev testing.