In Alan Trick <Alan (e-mail address removed)> had this to say:
My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:
Hi, I'm a web developer, and as such I realise that it is important
for me to let my sites work in a wide variety of browsers. This is a
simple job with most of them, however Internet Explorer is quite
picky on several issues and deviates from the regular standards which
means I have to carefully check it every time I make an update.
The problem is that I'm running linux, I have a copy of Windows, but
my server and everything else that I do is in linux so that means
that if I'm going to test my stuff in IE I have to copy everything
from my linux server to my windows one, reboot to windows, test it,
make the necissary changes, copy them back etc, etc. Quite a pain.
I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience, or knows where I can
find some info on how to do this.
Start here:
http://www.google.com/search?num=10...check+browser+rendering+compatibility&spell=1
See specifically:
How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single ...:
http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/multiplebrowsers.shtml
There's more available but that's probably the easiest way to do it. WINE
and using IE directly from your PC might be even more simple. Personally we
code for IE at our site, here's why:
1 4318 38.23% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
..NET
2 2690 23.82% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET
CLR 1
3 1573 13.93% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
4 405 3.59% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
FunWebProd
5 389 3.44% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8)
Gec
6 366 3.24% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
7 154 1.36% UdmSearch/3.1.19
8 83 0.73% ConveraCrawler/0.8 (+
http://www.authoritativeweb.com/crawl)
9 80 0.71% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; AT&T CSM6.0)
10 54 0.48% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.8)
Gecko/200505
11 53 0.47% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET
CLR 1
12 49 0.43% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; DigExt;
SV
13 47 0.42% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows XP)
14 41 0.36% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en)
Opera
15 39 0.35% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; BecomeBot/2.3; MSIE 6.0
compatible;
(I'm not sure how well that table will display) It shows that IE is the most
often used browser still and we've not time nor inclination to ensure that
the secondary browsers are able to display the content as we intended. We do
a cursory check with Firefox and Opera, sometimes we sucker an AOL user into
taking a peek. I've even been known to boot a Mac and check it with that. If
there's anything glaring then we make it a point to check it out and then we
decide to fix it or leave it but truly the impact hasn't been such that
we've ever felt obligated to change anything. We parse a bit of PHP and use
CSS but the rest is pretty much strict HTML so that might be why we have few
problems.
Anyhow, the Google search result above will *probably* show you various
methods. I seem to recall there being a site that offered this as a service
and I'd not be surprised if there was an application developed for such
testing by now. If there isn't then you should write one though you should
port it to Windows for lazy slackers like me.
Galen
--
"And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability
with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the
very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be
made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby."
Sherlock Holmes
