Has This Been Done?

I have an idea for an EXCELLENT resource for web designers/developers. I've been developping for the web for quite some time, and never have I seen this. If this exists somewhere on the web, PLEASE let me know...But here's my idea. Somehow get a copy of the install file for ALL the major versions of ALL the most popular available browsers out there. Then, have it all on one webpage so that people can download whatever browser(version) they want/need.The problem is, as you're writing and testing your code, you want to be able to say "it works in IE 5.0" or "it works in Netscape 3 for the Mac", etc. However, a google search produces no results for these browsers. You would think that netscape and IE would post these previous versions up, but I can't find them anywhere. They seem to want people to forget that older versions exist and just download the latest version!It would be so much more convenient to have all this on one page, so whatever platform/version you need to test in, you just download the install file and go from there.Does anybody know where I can find this kind of resource? Or if not, will anybody help me make this resource possible? I'm willing to post it up on a website if I can get people to find and send me previous versions of popular browsers.Thanks,kvarnerexpress

It's been done already - Evolt browser archive.

Looks like a very useful resource. The idea was good but it seems there were done already

I never knew that the Evolt "browser archive" existed...thanks for the link!!

why would you possibly want to have your pages optimized for older browsers let alone non-standard browsers such as IE?If it doesn't work properly on these, tough, they should upgrade... thats what technology is all about.

If it doesn't work properly on these, tough, they should upgrade... thats what technology is all about.

In the real world it doesn't work like that. People will still use whatever they want; you can't force anyone to upgrade. And if you're paying someone to make the website as compatible with as many browsers as possible, then you would expect those people to have some of these older browsers installed.

Yeah, people are not willing to update just becouse.I used to be like that, and im still like that. Instead of searching for the right plugins to see a given 'anything' from the web, i would look for the compatible 'anything' that works for me. Or even sometimes change to a close machine.Sometimes (like when i changed, err UPGRADED to firefox) i do so to test things, but truth is people are lazy (myself included) so you can never persuade someone to download next version browser. Besides, there are users (internet users) who actually dont know how to download a newer version, so there you go...Anyway, glad you posted this, its going to be very helpful.-10730

why would you possibly want to have your pages optimized for older browsers let alone non-standard browsers such as IE?

 

If it doesn't work properly on these, tough, they should upgrade... thats what technology is all about.

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You need to be able to make pages degrade nicely for those who don't upgrade.

those users who do not upgrade will probably not be able to appreciate your efforts in bringing them a compatible web page so it doesn't matter anyways.

Yeah, the Evolt browser archive is a nice thing, esp. if you have a user/customer using some old system...

But the guys at BrowserCam are a bit smarter. Here you can submit an url and a set of screen dumps are created automatically on several combinations of operating systems and browsers. See https://www.browsercam.com/

Only bad thing: it's a paid service, but you can try it out for free, and the prices are reasonable.

Implementing the functionality of BrowserCam yourself wouldn't be impossible. Start by installing some kind of virtualisation system (e.g. qdos or vmware), and you would be able to run several different operating systems on one machine. Alternativly you could make a multi boot machine, but then the machine had to do a reboot everytime a new OS was needed.

Now each OS should be set up to do the following when starting (booting):

1. look for an url (or list of urls) on a FTP-server,
2. open the urls in the installed browsers
3. taking screen shots of each browsers, and upload the image to the FTP-server

Now the FTP-server could be on the same physical machine, where we are running all the test OS's virtually... the process might take some time, but it would run automatically, and your web design would be tested across several OS'es and browsers!

It's not rocket science, but it will proberly take some trial and error.

You need to be able to make pages degrade nicely for those who don't upgrade.

i agree with Reatum!

the computers at my school are heaps restrictive.... i can't use anything with tabbed browsing... ARGHHH!!! but there's my point- it means that we can't 'just upgrade them'. also some people's operating systems can't handle new web browsers. you have to cut them some slack, maybe they can't afford a new comp.

my main annoyance is Firefox and IE interpret things differently... this caused major grief on my website for a while

those users who do not upgrade will probably not be able to appreciate your efforts in bringing them a compatible web page so it doesn't matter anyways.

remind me never ever to pay you to design a site for me, that is the slackest attitude ever. If the world were to switch to electric cars, however traditional gas stations still existed, would you expect anyone who had a gas car with a breakdown to buy a new car, because manufacturers shouldn't be bothered to make replacement parts for their cars, because it "doesn't matter anyways". An Active example, in Canada we switched to the metric system many years ago, yet you can still but wrenches, tape measures etc in imperial, why? because people have stuff they need to fix and metric tools won't work! Now maybe we don't appreciate the hardware stores importing non-metric tools but they still do it, because well for example I live on a farm and to buy all metric equipment could cost in the range of 2 million dollars, but imperial wrenches get lost or broke, and we don't want to replace a $100,000-$200,000 piece of equipment because we can't find a 1/2" wrench. If you don't want to provide me the 1/2" wrench then I will go to a store (web site) that does.

remind me never ever to pay you to design a site for me, that is the slackest attitude ever.

I dunno what you're going off about. I read the previous quote as being: most people who don't upgrade don't do so because they don't know how, ie, not very technical-minded. So the point is those people won't appreciate the extra effort gone into making a site as standards-compliant, and cross browser compatible as possible because they don't understand any of that stuff anyway.