Hallelujah! Cross Browser Testing Made Easy (FINALLY!)
Earlier this week, a company called Xenocode released an awesome new free set of tools which will be an absolute god-send for web developers.
The Xenocode Browser Sandbox provides 8 browsers for download. This includes IE6 which is the biggest pain of all for developers to test.
You have two options to run the browsers - download a “ClickStart” plugin and run the browsers as a “plugin” or download the standalone executable (.exe) file.
Personally, I was unable to get the “ClickStart” plugin to work at all - I tried installing it through Firefox and IE7 but nothing would happen when I tried to then run the browsers.
However, downloading the standalone executables works flawlessly. This is my preferred way of running them anyway - very easy to use. Once you have downloaded the exe file, double-click the executable and the relevant browser will load up as a normal application. From there, you can do anything you normally would in a browser.
This is incredibly handy for cross browser development testing.
So is there room for improvement? Yes, at the moment they work only on a Windows operating environment. I have read the company is not far away from releasing the downloads for a Mac environment. This would be insanely awesome - to run IE6 without having to do any Windows VMWare installations!
Check it out (at your own risk of course). As with any .exe file on the Internet, it is up to you to determine if you are willing to run it! I have read that people with Office 2007 installations have conflicts with the IE browsers downloaded from Xenocode - so best to hold off until that bug is fixed if you are reliant on your Office 2007 installation.
You can follow the company for updates on twitter or on their forums.
Leeane
