Standalone IE
- 14th August 2006 | permanent link
- comments (4)
As much as I dislike it, I have to test my sites in older version of IE. There are still a number of users that use decade versions of this bug plagued browser, although their number is diminishing daily. But nevertheless, to shut out any user is just plain wrong. Even if they are using IE 5.01.
But how to get your hands on some of those browsers. You could install older versions of Windows and keep your fingers crossed your computer will not catch anything. Well while I was browsing for older versions of Opera and Netscape I came accross the Browser Archive. And on the top of that page I found something I quite simply didn't expect to find: standalone versions of IE. Apparently you can run as many standalone versions of IE as your heart desires. And it turned out to be just the ticket.
It still says that the version is 7.0 but the rest gives away the true nature of the beast. Now I just have to get around to testing :)
And if you can fix some of the bugs relatively quick, why not :) I'm not supporting those visitors that browse with older versions, but there's allways a few lunatics (and I mean that in the most respectable way ^^) out there.
PHP IF browser script with a respectful link to one of newer browsers...
In my opinion, the only reason to develope sites to work in such old browsers (IE 5) is really just for fun :) If you have tons of time, offcourse.
Also there are a number of people that just don't upgrade, for one reason or another. More or less that reason is rumors they've heard about upgrading. So they just don't.
As for myself, I'm trying to make it a habbit of checking in every availible browser (Opera 8.x and 9.x, Netscape 7.x and 8.x, Firefox 1.x and 2.x) and as of finding this standalone IE, IE 5.5. But some restrictions have to be in place. I'm not going to completly change my CSS files just to accomodate IE 5.5, and conditional commenting just isn't what I would call nice coding. Don't know why ^^