I’m currently optimising my workflow and am creating a new testing environment.
I have two or three older Mozilla and Opera browser versions that I store in separate folders but I have the feeling that’s insufficient and ineffective.
How do you test for older Safari/FF/Chrome/Opera browser versions? I’m not asking for IE as there are several great threads floating around here on SP already.
Is there some clever tool or suite that lets me test more conveniently in multiple browser versions (minus IE)?
I’ve tried to get older browsers from the evolt.org archive but, alas, the links are all dead and I don’t see where I can acess them, which is a shame.
Thank you, Ralph. That’s a good solution to design graphic elements/positioning differences. I’ve actually installed Browserlabs for the first time yesterday and it looks fine.
The problem with this kind of service is that I can’t test functionality. That’s my biggest problem because I find that the most issues arise when a combination of CSS and Javascript is used, hence the need for an environment that allows interactive testing.
What I like about Browserlab is that it’s so easy to switch between different browsers with a single click. It’d be great if such an application were available for live testing.
Yes indeed. It’s kind of strange—with all the apps out there and people brilliant enough to write them—that nobody has come up with a solution for this. Maybe it’s because we web folk are too stingy to pay for something like this.
Every time my Windows-on-virtual-box gets a new Opera, I just rename it to Opera(version) at save (by default it wants to be called “Opera”). So the desktops there are riddled with Operas from 9.28 and up : )
For Firefox I found the whole setting profiles thing was not only a crapload of work, but was so easily lost when updates came. Luckily, I can keep K-Meleon for Windows as a wholly separate browser. It’s updated but still (so far, fingers stay crossed) uses the older Gecko rendering engine used by FF2… so it’s great for testing -moz-inline-block vs -moz-inline-box and some of the bigger bugs it had.
My firefox on Linux is always several versions behind bleeding edge, mostly because I go for long times before allowing the update manager to update it. Mostly because I don’t want to have to actually deal with the new “features” Mozilla comes up with… meanwhile on the virtual boxes the firefoxes get regularly updated as often as possible. I’ll stop if an important plugin like WebVisum stops working though.
Chrome I haven’t figured out. I regularly get “updates” without version numbers and have no clue what’s going on there… but I suspect Chrome on Linux lags Chrome on Windows so I consider my Chrome “old” and the virtual box one “new” for versions.
Safari so far since I have a virtual box for IE6 and one for IE7, there’s Safari 3 on one box and Safari 4 on another box. A machine at work has IE8 so there’s Safari 5, but that could be another virtual box (not sure how many my computer can handle running at once before it starts dividing by zero and 'splOding! or something though…).
How do you feel about screenshots? If that’s of use, I find Adobe BrowserLab pretty good. It gives you screen shots of current browsers (except Opera ) and older versions of FF, Safari, IE and Chrome.
It seems to be free at the moment, though that won’t last. It’s not as good as having the real browser there to poke at, but it’s a nice service all the same, is very slick, and gives you a good idea of what problems you may have to deal with.
) and older versions of FF, Safari, IE and Chrome.