internet explorer

Who needs Internet Explorer when you can use it in Firefox?

Matt Simner Creative Design, Tools, Web , , ,

I love Firefox and its addons, although I still habitually use Internet Explorer.  IE6 at work (which always provides some nice CSS challenges!) and IE7 at home.


I’m a bit slow off the mark with using firefox, but the latest addon that someone sent me yesterday may have tipped the balance.


The IE Tab addon actually uses the IE rendering engine to render in a new tab in Firefox.  It’s quite amusing when you right-click and get the IE context menu.


The really great thing about this is that you can then use the power of the other Firefox addons to develop for IE.  Here’s my list of ‘must haves’.



  • Firebug.  This is quite simply the best addon.  Hit F12 and you can instantly see (and manipulate) all sorts of things in the comfort of your own browser.
  • YSlow.  Great Javascript profiler
  • FireCookie. See and change your cookies (for development purposes of course! – Good to test the security of your apps)
  • Web Developer.  Bit of overlap with Firebug but some cool features.

The IE Developer Toolbar is still a pretty good tool, but Firebug just gives you more info when you’re debugging CSS (which is inevitable with IE).


 

Installing Multiple versions of Internet Explorer with Multiple_IE

Matt Simner Web , ,

I don’t have the time, inclination or grunty machines to play around with Virtual machines just so I can test a website in IE6 (after IE7 ‘magically’ appeared).  When I say ‘test’, I actually mean hack an IE-specific CSS together with some box-model workarounds.  I digress…


Enter Multiple_IE.  It’s not perfect (it’s a hack in itself), but it suffices in most cases so kudos for that…  You even get the nostalgia of IE3