On Jul 21, 2005, at 6:58 AM, Adam Kuehn wrote:
I'd like to use a Windows emulator, Virtual Pc on Mac OsX, to
resolve this issues... Could someone just give me some feedback
about using this software: does it exactly manage browsers as a Pc
would...Will the browser render engines run the styles in this
emulator as they would on a physical machine... Did someone
experienced bugs in it: Css displaying fine inside the emulator
and then break in a physical Win machine ?
Is this a way to go ? Is this method safe ?...
Adam makes good points. I'll try to keep this specific to CSS, but
need to provide some background:
Virtual PC emulates the hardware, not Windows. You then install a
real version of Windows on the emulated hardware. So, other than the
monitor/keyboard/mouse differences, this is a Windows machine you are
running. The most significant advantage here is not that you can run
Windows on your Mac, but that you can easily create a large number of
virtual boxes, each running a different flavor of Windows, upgraded
to a certain upgrade and then frozen (in the VPC's "Settings" menu,
set to "Discard Changes" once you upgrade to the point you want to
stop -- also protects against virus installs). Last month I set up 4
Windows 98, 2 Windows XP, and 2 Linux virtual PCs; each version of
Windows has a different version of Internet Explorer on it.
That's the prep work, here's the CSS pay-off: certain technologies
are shared in the Windows system, and so installing even "standalone"
versions of Internet Explorer on the same Windows machine result in
hybridized or wrong results during testing. These technologies are
typically Javascript and ActiveX and not CSS or rendering engines,
but they affect these techniques often employed in CSS:
- conditional comments (the version check is wonky)
-> in CSS, if you don't use a version filter on your
conditional comments, then your hacks aren't
forward-compatible
- Javascript (object detection may not reflect actual ability)
-> in CSS, this is IE's "behavior" property and
"expression" value
- ActiveX (newer controls used by the older browsers)
-> in CSS, this is IE's "filter" value, such as the
one that creates alpha transparency on pngs
Rendering in standalone installs is often OK, but with VPC you
install exactly what your visitors use. I know of no other way short
of massive partitioning of the drive to have one computer host so
many accurate test systems.
--
Ben Curtis : webwright
bivia : a personal web studio
http://www.bivia.com
v: (818) 507-6613
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