GeekFindr: Running older browsers
There’s now lots of browsers we’re running - Firefox 2, IE7 and Safari 3, but it turns out some people are stilll running on older browsers! Gasp! So it is often useful to also be able to check Firefox 1.5, IE6 and Safari 2 as we build sites out (you might even check older browsers than that, but I think you may just be making work for yourself, as most are on these two most recent versions of the three majors, but you know, maybe not). Fortunately lots of smart people have figured out how to run older versions of the browsers concurrently with the most recent.
With Safari it is super easy. Michel Fortin has gone through all the trouble of making all the previous versions of Safari available as standalone apps completel with an icon with the version number so you can see what’s happening in your dock. Simply go to that site and download the one you want, it couldn’t be easier. Oh, and if you’re looking through your visitor logs and wondering what all those Safari build numbers mean to see which versions you should support, check out the Apple page on the subject.
IE’s a little complexer except for the fact that someone made a whole app to help hide any complexity. You can grab the IE installer here and it does all the work for you. Some may prefer to see and handle everything that’s going on, though - as there are some side effects - fear not you can do it all yourself with the instructions on Manfred Staudinger’s Multiple IE page.
And Firefox is, surprisingly, kind of the hardest. You need to bust out the terminal or write some .bat files to make all the magic happen, but it isn’t overly hard anyway. If you are on windows you can check out this page and if you’re on a mac go to this one.
So go forth and be backwards compatible!
