Web Design + Virtual PC

[triton]

Hi,

I know from experience that when you design a site from a pc, it doesn't always look the same on a mac, and vice versa. If I'm designing a website from an Apple computer, can I see the differences if I used Internet Explorer on Virtual PC? Would these changes I'm seeing be truely representative of how it would look on a normal pc?

 

[brap]

I know from experience that when you design a site from a pc, it doesn't always look the same on a mac, and vice versa. If I'm designing a website from an Apple computer, can I see the differences if I used Internet Explorer on Virtual PC? Would these changes I'm seeing be truely representative of how it would look on a normal pc?

There is a way to get the Virtual PC to talk to the host, I believe it has something to do with forcing the Virtual Switch to the Airport, and connecting to it from the host's RJ45 ip... I did it a while back when I needed ASP serving up, it's a bit fuzzy now. Anyway, it's on MacOSXHints somewhere.

But, you may also wish to use Internet Explorer for Mac to view the pages; if it looks alright in that, it will 99% of the time look alright in IE6 for Windows - lowest common denominator and all that. Just make sure it's valid, see my retarded thread on Safari

 

[triton]

There is a way to get the Virtual PC to talk to the host, I believe it has something to do with forcing the Virtual Switch to the Airport, and connecting to it from the host's RJ45 ip... I did it a while back when I needed ASP serving up, it's a bit fuzzy now. Anyway, it's on MacOSXHints somewhere.

But, you may also wish to use Internet Explorer for Mac to view the pages; if it looks alright in that, it will 99% of the time look alright in IE6 for Windows - lowest common denominator and all that. Just make sure it's valid, see my retarded thread on Safari

What?!?

 

[mcgarry]

[snip]

But, you may also wish to use Internet Explorer for Mac to view the pages; if it looks alright in that, it will 99% of the time look alright in IE6 for Windows - lowest common denominator and all that. Just make sure it's valid, see my retarded thread on Safari

I can't answer the larger question in this thread-- in fact I'd like to know the answer myself-- but this part is not true in my experience, brap. When I had a little too much fun with "position: fixed" in CSS, IE6 and IE5 for Mac could hardly have looked more different. That's just one thing causing a difference, but I still wouldn't trust ol' IE5 for Mac to tell me how something looks on IE6 in XP. More experienced hands out there might have other such tales ...

 

[rendezvouscp]

Yes, Virtual PC is almost perfect for that kind of work. It's quite handy actually.

The above post (from my understanding) is about getting your files to run like they are on a server (so you could test PHP functions and whatnot). However, I disagree with your comment about IE 5 for Mac. They handle pages quite differently sometimes, even in very simple circumstances.
-Chase

 

[brap]

They handle pages quite differently sometimes, even in very simple circumstances.

This rings true if you're designing for IE6 and trying to "fix" all the fancy stuff which doesn't work in other, earlier versions.
It's largely untrue in the opposite direction, if you design something to work on Mac IE5 it will generally work on later versions. Pandering to the lowest common denominator...

If I'm designing a website from an Apple computer, can I see the differences if I used Internet Explorer on Virtual PC?

You can see the differences from VPC only if you host the site live on your Mac, and force Virtual PC to connect to it -- an explanation is on macosxhints.

 

[mcgarry]

This rings true if you're designing for IE6 and trying to "fix" all the fancy stuff which doesn't work in other, earlier versions.
It's largely untrue in the opposite direction, if you design something to work on Mac IE5 it will generally work on later versions. Pandering to the lowest common denominator...

Again, I don't know how isolated an example this is, but when I had a fully-validating page that used "position: fixed" to put a non-frames menu at the top of the page, IE5 for Mac at least put it in the right place, more or less, while IE6 on XP was thoroughly confused (FF and Safari were fine). I don't know how common an exception this is, but it's enough for me to not trust IE5 as a lowest common denominator. I'm no expert, that's just my experience.

This page concerning doctype declarations indicates some other differences, although his "Q" "A" and "S" don't always mean the same thing browser-to-browser.

 

[brap]

I'm no expert, that's just my experience.

Dude, me either - making no warranties here. This is my reasoning also.

But then, the two constructs I make a point to never, ever use are layers, or fixed positioning. The hassle of fixing is just not worth the minimal benefit...

 

[mcgarry]

Dude, me either - making no warranties here. This is my reasoning also.

But then, the two constructs I make a point to never, ever use are layers, or fixed positioning. The hassle of fixing is just not worth the minimal benefit...

You're probably right, it was a bad idea, and of course it didn't work (but hey, it validated, woo-hoo).

Still, I get the feeling sometimes that nothing functions quite like IE5 for Mac ... it really is quite the oddball orphan.