I Dream in Colors

11/11/06 So, i installed IE7..

I did. A client complained that his site was broken on IE7, so i had to install it to test it. I was putting this off (even though i shouldn’t have), but now i had no choice. So how did it go? Let’s see…

Instalation took a while. A long while. At least none of the horror stories i have been reading about happened to me. After it finished everything was working perfectly.

Whew.

I then proceeded to fix my client’s site. I had used conditional comments to call an IE6 specific stylesheet. IE7 was not getting that stylesheet, as i intended - after all, IE7 is standards compliant, right, Microsoft?.

My first guess was to make IE7 get the IE6 stylesheet. Lo and behold, it worked flawlessly! So i went and tested another of my sites. Broken on IE7, fixed after making it use the IE6 stylesheet. I’m sorry Microsoft, you fixed what?. Ha, i shouldn’t be complaining, it’s less work for me after all! (riiiight, i’m wishing all sites render in IE7 just like they do on IE6, but i know it won’t be like that)

Now i had IE7 installed and i had fixed the site i had to fix. But i didn’t have IE6 anymore. IE is bundled into windows, so installing a new version will replace the old one. That’s no good. No good at all. I need IE6, it’s still the most used browser. As much as i hate it, i need my sites to render properly on it.

What was Microsoft’s solution?

Use Virtual PC.

No, no, no, i want a standalone version of IE7 or IE6 so i can test my sites on both browsers easily, like i do with Opera and Firefox. If i was on a Mac i’d use it, but i’m not.

Sorry, no can do. You’ll have to get Virtual PC. Or maybe a second computer.

Ha, right. A second computer, that’s easier.

But all wasn’t lost yet. In my aid came evolt.org and their browser archive. Among the endless list of browsers they have there’s a set of standalone IE’s, including IE6.

Perfect.

Well, almost.

You see, those conditional comments i use don’t work on these standalone installs of IE. That makes them very inconvenient, if not useless. But again, someone was smart enough to find a workaround for it. The people at positioniseverything.net provide us with an easy way to fix that. It’s a very small change that’s completely reversible. So far it works fine here.

Oh, another problem with these standalone installs is that they’ll all show the version as the one you have installed -e.g. my IE6 claims to be IE7. No problem by me so i didn’t bother to fix that, but again that’s a really easy fix. Also, some features won’t work, making these browser non usable for other than testing. But that’s not a problem either. Who wants to use IE for real anyway… ;)

Sumarizing, get the standalone IE6 and then fix the conditional comments problem. It’s easy and it works.

Update: Ok, it doesn’t work that well.

Technorati Tags: IE7, IE6, IE standalone, IE6 standalone, IE conditional comments, evolt.org, positioniseverything.net

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