Datasheet

IE 7 is available for the following operating systems:

❑ Windows XP Service Pack 2

❑ Windows XP Pro 64-bit Edition

❑ Windows Server 2003

❑ Windows Vista

You can obtain IE 7 from Microsoft’s website at

http://www.microsoft.com/ie.

Internet Explorer 6

At the time of this writing Internet Explorer 6 is still the top dog with its browser market share between

50 and 85 percent, depending on the website’s audience (see my discussion of Internet Explorer’s market

share in the section titled “How CSS Came to Be” earlier in this chapter). If you don’t already have IE 6,

you can obtain it from

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/default.mspx.

Installing Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer for Testing

At the time of this writing, you cannot install IE 7 alongside IE 6 on the same copy of Windows. For

development, you need a way to test IE 6 and IE 7 both, since you’ll have visitors to your website on

both browsers. The following are a few ways to do this.

❑ Use PC virtualization/emulation software such as Virtual PC (a product made by Microsoft),

which allows you to install and run different versions of Windows (or other operating systems,

such as Linux) from within Windows or Mac OS X. Essentially, you can load up a new instance

of Windows from your Windows desktop, and have that instance of Windows run in a window,

independently. For example, Figure 1-2 shows a screenshot of me running Windows XP and IE 6

from my Mac OS X desktop, using the open source software Q, which lets me install and run

Windows from within Mac OS X.

❑ Another option is setting up two different physical computers, one with IE 6 installed, and the

other with IE 7.

❑ If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can set up two installations of Windows on the

same computer, although for this discussion, this method is a bit too advanced for me to ade-

quately cover here. If you’d like to learn more about installing Windows more than once on the

same computer, more information about that can be found at

http://www.microsoft.com/

windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/multiboot.mspx

Figure 1-2 shows two instances of Windows XP running in Parallels Desktop for Mac; one is running

IE 6, and the other is running IE 7.

Most people prefer to keep it simple, and have all of their development tools at their fingertips. That

makes the virtualization/emulation method the most attractive, in lieu of actually being able to install

IE 6 alongside IE 7. I discuss this method in further detail in the next section.

Chapter 1: Introducing Cascading Style Sheets

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