If you have done any xhtml / css, I’m sure you have experienced the joy of making the site look the same in all browsers. Typically went implementing a site, I will first develop it in FireFox to get the general layout correct, then test in Safari, Chrome, and the dreaded multiple versions of Internet Explorer. Recently, a colleague of mine pointed me in the direction of a tool called IETester.
What IETester will do, is install Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7, and 8 beta 2 on your computer all in one nice interface without messing up your current browser settings. It also uses the correct javascript engines in addition to the rendering engine for each version, so you are able to experience your site just like your poor visitors who are using IE.
The only downside I have found, is that this is a Window XP / Vista only application. I spent a couple minutes with Wine trying to get it to run with limited success. If anyone figures that out, please leave a comment and let me know, as I would love to have this running on Ubuntu 8.10, but for time being I’ll use my wife’s laptop which has Windows on it.
The interface is based off of the ribbon design that MS Office 2007 introduced and incorporates tabs where you can have different versions of IE all open to the same url. A handy feature I noticed is the ‘refresh all tabs, no cache’ which does exactly what it says. Typically, I’ll open the page I want to test in the 4 different version and then keep using the above mentioned button to load up the changes in all the tabs at once. All in all, I highly recommend grabbing this tool. It’s bound to save you many hours of frustrating work.
Tags: apps, Internet Exploder, web development