If I’m developing a site, is there an easy way to see how my design works with older versions of IE/etc? Can I have multiple versions of IE running on the same machine?
(I’m asking because I just had to revert a site I recently did for a client because ‘two people so far couldn’t see the content’. Every person I sent the site to had no trouble, so I’m imagining some folks must still be on IE 5.5 or something like that)
Easy? No. But it’s much easier than it used to be. Check out Selenium and particularly Selenium IDE, which is a Firefox extension that allows you to record scripts of browsing actions. It’s very easy to record a simple script that follows a few links and verifies that, say, certain text is present on the page that loads. While you can only record the scripts using Firefox, you can run them using all major browsers available with the Selenium-RC framework. That’s a little trickier, and might take some homework on your part if you’re not familiar with some of the technologies it uses.
As far as IE, there are ways of coaxing multiple versions on the same machine, depending on your OS. But most shops these days I know of will only go back as far as IE6 in terms of previous versions; otherwise you’ll drive yourself mad. I know several who will only support IE7.
Another option would be to write your web interface using a cross-browser toolkit, such as Dojo or GWT, which would allow you to ensure maximum compatibility from the outset.
What’s your budget? Is this a capability you can blow a little money on? If so, buy a Mac, such as a Mac Mini; buy Parallels and put it on, and install XP, Vista, and any older OS’s you anticipate on different virtual hard disks. Download and install all the browsers applicable to each OS. Download and install SheepShaver if you want OS 9. Obviously download and install the various OS X browsers on the native HD. Install the X11 environment and install various standard Unix / X11 browsers.
That covers pretty much everything except possibly out-of-date older MacOS X browsers such as the first version of Safari or the Mac version of Internet Explorer from the pre-Safari days. If you want those you can probably acquire them from Mac-centric message board folks (they should still run under modern OS X, although admittedly the Java et al will be using the modern incarnations). And you can run most of this stuff alongside of each other instead of having to reboot etc.; might even be able to AppleScript or otherwise automate the process of sending a given URL to all these different OS’s and browsers.
This site will test a page in a wide range of browsers - it does only do a page at a time, and the page does have to be accessible on the web, but it might be useful.