This is an utterly content-free rant in which I express my anger at recent Internet Explorer preview releases requiring installation of what is effectively an entirely new operating system. I would like to know how new IE behaves on various testcases. But I don’t want to potentially hose my primary functioning Windows system to do it, especially if I then lose access to a working IE9 installation. And I am really not interested in wasting a bunch of time to spin up a virtual machine just so I can waste a bunch more time to “upgrade” it to test a new version of IE.
Here’s a novel concept: what about shipping a browser that doesn’t have to insert itself deep into operating system guts? Maybe you could even install and uninstall it distinct from the OS. But that’s crazytalk, nobody would ever do that, right?
So, yeah, whatever the latest IE10 does, meh. Someone who cares can be the sacrificial lamb and find that out, if it actually matters.
(“Content-free rant”, indeed. Future posts will return to substantive form.)
So true. >.>
Comment by the_dees — 27.09.11 @ 11:34
This may not help, but Microsoft has been providing virtual machines with different versions of IE installed. I didn’t look close, so this may have only been for older versions of the browser.
You are correct though, this is a fail for Microsoft. Is it possible to have two versions of Safari installed on Osx?
Comment by Peter — 27.09.11 @ 11:44
“But that’s crazytalk, nobody would ever do that, right?”
Nobody would ever want IE on their PCs, right?
Comment by Tiago — 27.09.11 @ 12:11
I’m not entirely sure about Safari. You can run different versions of WebKit within Safari, tho, so that gives you the web compatibility answers if that’s what you’re testing (as I generally am). And I can run Safari on Windows anyway (and generally do, as I don’t use a Mac and it’s slightly easier to remote into my Windows box than into the OS X box available to me), and for the sorts of behaviors I’m testing, I don’t really need to worry about cross-operating system differences.
Comment by Jeff — 27.09.11 @ 13:27
There’s a developer preview of IE10 for Windows 7 (and possibly Vista). It installs alongside IE9.
Comment by Fred — 27.09.11 @ 13:48
I believe that’s the old, first preview. The most recent one, as far as I can tell, requires the full OS install.
Comment by Jeff — 27.09.11 @ 14:01
That’s still the IE9 engine. Previews are coming out every 8-12 weeks
Comment by Fred — 27.09.11 @ 14:35
But however will they provide “native HTML5” (the only *real* HTML5) if they don’t do this? Seriously though, I think it says a lot about a company when its competitor’s products (browsers) have better feature support in general, *and* wider support for Microsoft OS’s. If they can manage to do it, why can’t Microsoft, considering they *own all the code*?
Comment by Mike — 27.09.11 @ 15:18
@Fred: Not sure about that. Last time i installed the IE10 preview it actually replaced my IE9 here on Windows 7, without telling me during the installation. Then it wouldn’t let me install IE9 anymore because i already had a “newer version” – except that the 10 preview didn’t have toolbars or an address bar in the interface.
Also, afaik IE10 runs on Windows7 and above only – not on Vista.
Comment by Daniel — 26.04.12 @ 20:03