I had actually read about this back in the beginning of November and I thought I’ll share it with you all incase you hadn’t got wind of it already… It kicks arse. :D
Joe Maddalone, the one whom stumbled across this writes:
I, like so many other’s, have struggled with ways to test designs, css, etc. in multiple versions of Internet Explorer. Usually the only solutions were to have multiple OS’s installed on multiple partitions, or running some sort of emulation software such as VMWare.
While working on a project recently that I realized at the last second would be running in Internet Explorer 5.5, I had an immediate need to test this application in this browser.
So what?
you may say… but there were wider implications which would prove oh-so-helpful for those of us that need to test websites in multiple versions of Internet Explorer.
Microsoft Corp. today announced how it will respond to the August jury decision in the Eolas patent lawsuit. The steps include modest changes to Microsoft® Windows® and Internet Explorer as well as measures that Web developers and others who use Internet Explorer technology can take to ameliorate or eliminate the impact of the ruling. Microsoft is providing full documentation for these changes to help guide Web developers and other developers that use its Internet Explorer technology to create the best possible user experience. Other companies providing specialized documentation related to this change are listed on the Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/.
… and the clever stuff:
The solution developed by Microsoft has two main parts:
- First, Microsoft will make minor changes to Internet Explorer’s handling of some Web pages that use ActiveX® Controls, such as Macromedia Flash, Apple QuickTime, RealNetworks RealOne, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Sun Java Virtual Machine and Microsoft Windows Media® Player. It is currently anticipated that this change will be deployed by early next year. If Web developers have not updated their Web pages using the techniques suggested by Microsoft and others, users may see a simple dialog box before the browser loads the ActiveX Control.
- Second, Microsoft and other industry partners are working to provide documentation for Web developers that describe how to author Web pages so the dialog box would not be necessary.
Following on from Joe Maddalone’s discovery, Ryan Parman decided to be an enterprising individual and offered pre-changed versions of Internet Explorer to download. Yours truly has offered to help out on the bandwidth side of things and the files have been mirrored on here. :D
Anyhow… the files for various versions of Win32:
Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server
- Standalone Internet Explorer 6.0 Eolas Edition
- 3.41 MiB - md5sum: bd2f999d9a943a76cf7b73553e75fea4
- Standalone Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2
- 3.51 MiB - md5sum: 80b4823b3d7d37f26cf0e6cb0424bf95
- Standalone Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2
- 2.93 MiB - md5sum: 9be11fba34c844e4f39220b9b6c8cc6c
- Standalone Internet Explorer 4.01
- 2.38 MiB - md5sum: d043238cee0c07a323bd1246bb131c08
- Standalone Internet Explorer 3.0
- 909.4 kiB - md5sum: 104b837c9d0463c364265c756e0576d4
Windows 98/98SE/ME
- Standalone Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2
- 3.51 MiB - md5sum: b9a2553040c153129fd281872ff6b072
- Standalone Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2
- 2.93 MiB - md5sum: 0b04bb907a4ec53c2e16c36213b7c2a8
- Standalone Internet Explorer 4.01
- 2.36 MiB - md5sum: 998c359860513debaae7e420f434b71d
- Standalone Internet Explorer 3.0
- 827.6 kiB - md5sum: 4a59eca298c26de0aeee7e4d96e24c23
There you go, couldn’t be a happier bunny now can we? Just unzip them to somewhere reasonably sensible on your system… the Internet Explorer folder is sensible enough. :D
Oh and Luke Redpath has created a rather spiffy set of colour-coded icons for the various Internet Explorer installs. :D