Yep. My workload just went up another notch. I'm sure my clients will be grateful for the opportunity to fork over more money to work around Microsoft's refusal to embrace an open standard.
Incidentally, I've been using multiple VMs to test multiple versions of IE. But it is now apparent (well, more apparent) that this method cannot scale. Has anyone had luck with these tools that can install multiple versions of IE at the same time, like this one: "Internet Explorer Collection"?
The release of IE8 all about embracing open standards (CSS 2.1, most of HTML 4, parts of HTML 5, major parts of ECMAScript 3.1). How is Microsoft supposed to embrace open standards without releasing major upgrades to their products? How can Microsoft start embracing open standards without people complaining about too many versions of their software?
In my dreams? They'd do it the same way Apple did when they released Safari. "Here's our new official browser. It's not like any of the existing Mac browsers [1], but it's based on an open-source rendering engine and Steve Jobs likes it."
But, yeah, yeah, I hear you. That's a fantasy. Microsoft and their customers just do not work that way.
And my ire is indeed misplaced: Of Microsoft's three current browsers, IE8 is most likely the least of my problems. My problem is with IE6. I welcome anything that will help to further eliminate IE6 from my life, including IE8, Windows 7, and vigilante ninjas who sneak into people's houses at night with Firefox installers and stealthily upgrade their beige boxes.
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[1] Ironically, the best Mac browser of the time was IE.
I don't know the specifics, but there's no point in embracing an open standard if you just run hopscotch through the spec, picking and choosing what you'll implement.
I've found multiple IE's (Google for it) running on XP Pro in Parallels on OS X with a connection open to my localhost (back on the Mac side) to be an OK solution. I can edit in TextMate and refresh the cohesive IE window, be it 6, 7, or now (shudder) 8.
We officially support IE6, IE7, IE8, Safari3, and FF3. We're now in the ridiculous position of spending more time testing different versions of IE than we do all the other browsers.
We've already pushed the IE7 compat meta tag out onto all our pages. I think the intended user of that tag is the guy who's never supported anything but IE7. We're hoping that it'll give us an effective support load of "four and a half" browsers, rather than five.
Incidentally, I've been using multiple VMs to test multiple versions of IE. But it is now apparent (well, more apparent) that this method cannot scale. Has anyone had luck with these tools that can install multiple versions of IE at the same time, like this one: "Internet Explorer Collection"?
http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm
Is this what I should have been using all along?