Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Need to test in different browsers?

The fact is, different web browsers can display the same page differently. For this reason, web designers have to test HTML web page designs in all the common web browsers or face the very real possibility that the page they design will break. It is a tedious and remarkably annoying process. But it is easier then it was. In the old days, a designer would need to have a couple of different test computers stashed in the office because, if you wanted to see how a page 'rendered' on a Mac, well, you needed a Mac. If he wanted to see how it rendered on an earlier version of Internet Explorer, he needed a different computer for each version! Windows can not run more then one version of Internet Explorer.

There really was no way around this because no browser is fully compliant with HTML or CSS standards. Though Microsoft is, by far, the least compliant and at the same time, the most buggy.
Thankfully, things have gotten easier. Internet Explorer 7 is better (not good, just better) then it was. For some reason, Apple released a version of Safari for Windows. And a few months ago, I found MultipleIEs. It is a hack (fully packaged for super easy installation) that lets me install, you guessed it, multiple versions of Internet Explorer on one Windows computer.
What a relief.
Of course, it would be a lot easier if people would just stop using Internet Explorer all together. Come on guys, you can do it!

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