Browser archive now live.

Posted on August 17, 1999

in Software

by Adrian Roselli (aardvark)

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Adrian Roselli

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User since: December 13, 1998

Last login: July 07, 2010

Articles written: 79

There are many places you can go on the net to see statistics about which browsers support which tags, and sometimes even how they are supported. But none of them can give the perspective of precisely how it appears to the user with that browser. Not without actually downloading it, installing it, and viewing the site in question yourself.

At Algonquin Studios, we make every effort to build sites that are accessible. Since many clients need e-commerce sites which are usable by as many people as possible, this may be a tall order to fill if you don't have the experience hand-coding your HTML through all the different browser versions that have come out since the spawn of the web. Sometimes the only way to guarantee that a site is accessible to a user of Mosaic 3.0 is to install Mosaic 3.0 and view the site yourself.

Given our focus on usable sites, I began to build my browser archive, now uploaded to browsers.evolt.org, to ensure that the sites my company built would truly be usable, and not potentially usable based on imprecise data provided by third parties.

You will note many archaic browsers in there, more than you would expect to see in a normal testing process, but that is a testament to how this took on a life of its own. More accurately, I needed a hobby, and this became it. So, don't be surprised to find Netscape Navigator 0.9 and Netshark 1.0 as well as Internet Explorer 5.0 and some of the latest Mozilla builds. That's just how these things go when they get out of hand.

And so I hand my browser archive over to evolt.org, and free myself of the burden (actually, I'll still be maintaining it, so email me if you have some to add). Please feel free to add browsers or versions that are missing, since even at over 80 independent browsers (and many versions of most), there are still holes in what is represented. Of note, are non-MS-Windows versions of almost anything other than Navigator or Internet Explorer.

A founder of evolt.org, Adrian Roselli (aardvark) is the Senior Usability Engineer at Algonquin Studios, located in Buffalo, New York.

Adrian has years of experience in graphic design, web design and multimedia design, as well as extensive experience in internet commerce and interface design and usability. He has been developing for the World Wide Web since its inception, and working the design field since 1993. Adrian is a founding member, board member, and writer to evolt.org. In addition, Adrian sits on the Digital Media Advisory Committee for a local SUNY college and a local private college, as well as the board for a local charter school.

You can see his brand-spanking-new blog at http://blog.adrianroselli.com/ as well as his new web site to promote his writing and speaking at AdrianRoselli.com

Adrian authored the usability case study for evolt.org in Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself, published by glasshaus. He has written three chapters for the book Professional Web Graphics for Non Designers, also published by glasshaus. Adrian also managed to get a couple chapters written (and published) for The Web Professional's Handbook before glasshaus went under. They were really quite good. You should have bought more of the books.

6 comments on this article. Log in to add your comment | Rate this article:

Testing machine

Submitted by aardvark on March 1, 2002 - 10:54.

Well, there's a great article over at A List Apart about not just what browsers you need to build a good testing environment, but how you build the environment. Read it: Building a cross-platform web design testing station

How about building a browscap.ini file?

Submitted by eh on August 1, 2002 - 22:46.

The browser archive is pretty amazing itself, but it would be even nicer if there would be a (dynamicly built) browscap.ini (a file containing information about browser capabilities usable by both ASP and PHP pages) file based on it. IMHO, it would easify the making of cross-platform websites considerably. It is possible, of course, to go through the whole archive and manually build one, but since the information is already in a database (right?), it would make more sense to directly query that and build a browscap file based on the information every time there's a new addition, or the information about any browser is edited. This way we would have a dynamic, up-to-date browscap file available for anyone to download, which would contain information about all the browsers, not just IE and NS like the one available from Microsoft. If there already is something like this available, I'm sorry about the unnecessary comment. I just couldn't find it.

browscap.ini

Submitted by aardvark on August 1, 2002 - 23:11.

Currently, the browser archive is just a collection of browser install packages. When I started it as my own collection, I wasn't concerned about logging features because I would just install it if I were curious. When I posted it to evolt.org, it was posted as nothing more than the directory structure and the archives, so currently there is no database driving it, and there are no records of browser features. Just tracking the features alone would be a full-time job, and since so many other sites do it, and since anyone can just grab a browser and install it, it seemed pretty low-priority to me.

As for the browscap.ini file, well, you can see that I just don't have the time to stay on top of that. There's a company called cyScape that used to maintain one, and you can still get it at their site, although it hasn't been updated in over two years. At the very least, it's a great starting point. In the meantime, a Google search revealed a number of tutorials, links to support articles, and alternatives to the browscap.ini file (all on the first page). You might want to keep hunting...

How do I Load NS 4X?

Submitted by nvrau on September 26, 2002 - 14:21.

Great work, how do i load NS 4X using the browser page? After i d/l the file it looks like it tried to open dos. What am i missing? TIA, Brian

Reverting back to older versions of IE

Submitted by Jeffe on March 11, 2003 - 14:44.

Thanks for this great resource Adrian. I had thought of trying to do this myself some years ago, but never got my act together enough like you did to actually do it. I am indebted to you for your industriousness!

I have a question for the evolt community though. Currrently I have Internet Explorer 6 installed on all my machines. A client just told me that they are getting a JavaScript error with IE 5.0. But, Windows (2000 and NT4) won't let me uninstall IE so I can recreate their configuration and test it. Windows will let me revert back to IE 5.5, but I can't delete the friggin' program and then install version 5.0. Also, it won't let me have more than one version of IE running on the same computer. So, I am stuck.

Does anyone know how to circumvent all this and delete IE 5.5 so I can then install version 5.0? Or any other solution? Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

- Jeff

Multiple MS IE

Submitted by Strider72 on May 23, 2003 - 10:50.

Jeffe -- I use Virtual PC on a Mac. I'm running MSIE 4, 5, and 6, as well as various and sundry Netscapes and whatnot, not to mention the MAc version of all of these. Lynx too.... I believe there is Virtual PC for Windows as well, which allows you to run separate Windows/DOS PCs in emulation on one Windows machine. Connectix was the company, but MS recently bought it.

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