How do you develop on a minority OS?
As I mentioned before, I made the switch to GNU/Linux at home some time ago. I talked about the benefits it brought me in terms of PC performance and productivity.
But at work, I’m still firmly rooted in the Windows camp. Why? Primarily because my job involves developing web sites and apps.
Tracking browser usage is a notoriously haphazard affair. According to the much-quoted W3C schools statistics, roughly 53% of users are using Internet Explorer. According to wikipedia, that number is nearly 75%.
Given internet explorer’s ‘unusual’ implementation of web standards – not to mention its market share – it is a necessity to test on these browsers. This is where things get a bit tricky for users of minority operating systems such as Linux, or OSX.
Sure, there are services such as Browsershots which take snapshots of sites using particular browsers, but if you’re anything like me, developing for IE is an iterative process. Make a change, hit refresh. Make a change, hit refresh. Waiting 3-30 minutes to see an update isn’t an option!
I’d be interested to hear comments from anyone who has found a way round this issue.
Tags: Internet Explorer, Linux, web development, Windows
I think you’re looking for this:
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Beta
Another option is to install windows in a VM (like Virtualbox or VMware) – and then use some similar solution for windows.
And here’s something that should help you install it on your distro:
http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-install-internet-explorer-on-ubuntu8.04
Peterix – thanks for those links! I had wanted to avoid the VM solution if possible, but I’ve never come across ies4linux before. I’ll try them out – thanks!
Hi,
I’ll need to check out ies4linux as well. I installed a Linux server for a mate, while he uses IE on his PC he often has to use Firefox on the Linux, now he may have a choice of standardization.
thanks
I deal with this issue nearly daily. I use wine (i.e. ies4linux) to test earlier versions of IE. I use a virtual image of windows (I installed an old copy of XP and run it via qemu-kvm and it is very fast) to test IE7 (which won’t run on wine yet). Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found a good way to test in safari.
Peterix, thank you for posting those links. As a developer I have been wanting to standardize my use of IE to make things quicker and easier, but while on Linux it has been very difficult. I appreciate the time you put into commenting. And John thank you for posting about this topic, I’m sure there are many people out there like ourselves who have been searching for this solution.