As a web dev and a designer i’v been struggling with testing cross browser testing for along time.
Im using a mac so half of the browsers out there i can easily run on my osx. but there is one dreadful browser that isnt running well on osx. you guessed it. IE!, on all of its versions, 7 or 6 wont run proper on wine under osx and if it does it requires too much work getting wine to run on your osx then to actually installing IE.
I was amazed to discover that nobody is currently doing anything about that as an online service except browsercam.com that charge too much and give you an vnc account for payment. i wanted screenshots immediately and efficiently or a full-scale browser.

Which leads me to my recent finding. VMware Fusion Beta. Its a lightweight virtual machine unlike parallels that massacre my resources on my macbook. parallels require an installation of win xp. i know everybody got a pirated copy somewhere but i wanted to be legit. if i started paying for music i can continue being legit with this also.
So i installed VMware Fusion beta. after the install i got a left with a blank screen saying ‘install machine’ or ‘download’ naturally i believe in the web resources more then searching for an iso on my machine and i ended up looking at a place called VMware market place. a place where good willing people create vmx files (sounds like the bikes no?) that you can download from their server at top speed and run at your disposal.

I found this MultiBrowser Appliance © 2006 Rainer Finck which is a virtual linux machine based on debian that holds most common web browsers running at low resources without breaking my system.

What the MultiBrowser Appliance can do
The MultiBrowser Appliance is a virtual appliance for VMware, which allows you to use many different browsers. These browsers include:
Microsoft® Internet Explorer (emulated with WINE)
Versions 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0
Mozilla Firefox (including the Web Developer toolbar)
Version 1.5.0.3
Opera
Version 8.54
Konqueror
Version 3.5.0
Lynx
Version 2.8.5
ELinks
Version 0.10.4

Wonderful!, all i have todo now is just run it and see everything thru diffrent web browsers. then even bothered to take the time and create a one click menu for running and installing different browsers as you wish. now all i have todo is open diffrent browsers without a glitch and see my works under many diffrent browsers. a dream come true.

Here are the useful links:
VMware Fusion home
Home of the Browser Appliance
Disney.com

   

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