Setting up a test environment

[Steven Dilley]

I need some advice. How do you set up a test environment, with every
possible browser?
My past experience is that once you install a new version, the old version
my not necessarily
behave the same as it used to. And, upgrading is easy but downgrading is
nearly impossible.

Apart from having one machine per browser, how can I manage this?

What are the sources for downloading the various browsers?

--Thanx in advance for your help,
--Steve

[nic]

"Steven Dilley" <st***********@ compuware.com> wrote in message news:<3f******@ 10.10.0.241>...

I need some advice. How do you set up a test environment, with every
possible browser?
My past experience is that once you install a new version, the old version
my not necessarily
behave the same as it used to. And, upgrading is easy but downgrading is
nearly impossible.

Apart from having one machine per browser, how can I manage this?

Validation is almost certainly the most time-effective form of
verification you can do to cater for multi-platform operability. That
being said there are issues that validation will not warn you about
and if you are delivering web-apps or other complex stuff you may need
to do real multi-platform testing.

Suggestions in no particular order:

Browser photo software (http://www.netmechanic.com/browser-index.htm
for example) can show you what a site will look like in various
situations. Not much good for testing functionality.

Drive imaging software: build up a CD library of installs of operating
system/browser combinations and restore them onto your test PC as and
when you need to test on that combination. The most absolute solution
in terms of testing on the real user set-up but switching between
images can be time-consuming and with the possible number of
combinations you have to worry about that can be an issue. You can
pick up the imaging software fairly cheaply, or even free on magazine
covers on occasion.

Virtual machine software: install multiple operating systems on a
single PC (windows or Linux) and run one or more of them at a time
(memory dependent) to test various combinations. Very quick for
switching between setups and everything is carefully sandboxed. Also
if you only have the one machine it is still available - just shut
down the virtual ones to free up the memory you need.

I'm afraid for Mac you're on your own, I've not tested on there for so
long I'm way out of date on available tools.
What are the sources for downloading the various browsers?

Try http://browsers.evolt.org/

--
Nic