How can I use multiple browser versions at one time?
On Windows I can use Utilu Firefox collection (there also ie collection on his site).
How can I use multiple browser versions to see how my website works in different versions of different browsers in OS X?
For example I want to install browsers with biggest market share:
- Internet Explorer
- Firefox 3.6, latest and previous
- Google Chrome latest and previous
- Safari (any older versions possible)
- Opera
Solution 1:
Firefox
Firefoxes is a shell scripts that will install all major versions of Firefox on OS X, and set up separate profiles so you can use them simultaneously. Currently it installs:
- Firefox 2.0.0.20
- Firefox 3.0.19
- Firefox 3.5.9
- Firefox 3.6.28
- Firefox 4.0.1
- Firefox 5.0.1
- Firefox 6.0.1
- Firefox 7.0.1
- Firefox 8.0.1
- Firefox 9.0.1
- Firefox 10.0.2
- Firefox 11.0
- Firefox Beta
- Firefox Aurora
- Firefox Nightly
- Firefox UX Nightly
You can set it up so it only installs the specific versions you want.
Optionally, the script can install Firebug for each version of Firefox too.
It will also set icons that contain the version number:
Safari
For Safari, check out Multi-Safari.
Chrome/Chromium
For Chrome/Chromium, install any version you want, change the app name from Chromium.app to e.g. Chromium 19.app for clarity, then disable auto-updates for that version.
Opera
Download old Opera versions here: ftp://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/mac/
IE
Get VirtualBox and then run this ievms script. It will automatically download legal Windows images for testing purposes and set up virtual machines for every IE version you need.
Solution 2:
MultiFirefox supports what you need, and seems to have good reviews. A drawback with it is that it doesn't support keeping multiple versions open simultaneously.
Solution 3:
While not actually on your machine, you can also use a web application like BrowserShots.org to deliver you screenshots of the page rendered in a multitude of browsers or something like Adobe's BrowserLab.
Solution 4:
Internet Explorer
Of course there is Internet Explorer for Mac (PPC) but it's not very useful because it's based on different rendering engine (Tasman). It will run on OSX versions with Rosetta support. It can be downloaded from Internet Archive.
Some Windows Internet Explorer versions do work in wine (winetricks helps a lot):
Safari
There is multi-safari project. There are 1.x - 4.x versions and they may work or not depending on your OSX version (look at compatibility grid on his site).
Firefox
I've found, that it's enough just to rename .app and then run it with different Firefox profiles.
- download all required version
- copy .apk`s in temporary place an rename them so you can distinguish one version from another
- put all renamed version to /Applications folder
- run needed firefox with -ProfileManager option and make a profile for each firefox (just in case)