Web design & FOSS
Front-end web technologies and Free Open Source Software.
Thursday 22 January 2009, 11:43 AM
VirtualBox - hedging my bets
For my latest Joomla! site, I have set up a Windows XP Virtual Machine (VM), using the VirtualBox Open Source Edition. Trouble is, once I'd installed Internet Explorer 7, I couldn't get a standalone copy of Internet Explorer 6 working.
So, I created a new WinXP VM and then cloned it using these instructions from the VirtualBox forums. Now, I have standalone IE5.5 (from the browser archive at evolt.org) and IE6 on one VM, IE7 on another and IE8 on a third.
And I can test away to my heart's content for those poor unfortunates locked into a 'World with Windows but no way out'™ ;)
PreviousComments on this post
Great stuff there..I even think virtual machines are a much beter option than having seperate user accounts at least for domestic family type computing. Although In these days of security headaches it wouldn't do any harm to isolate the host and just use that as the ultimate and secure backup.
Imagine the peace of mind, knowing that your core system is always secure, and all staff with a reckless nature can trash as many virtual machines as they like.
> Imagine the peace of mind
The dev manager at my penultimate job in London had set up exactly that -- we each had our own dev environment, and it was a relief knowing I couldn't trash anyone elses!
That's been my experience as well. Using VMs has definitely been worth the effort. Being able to start up with an OS environment that you know well without worrying has made software testing a lot easier. No more worries about what might have been left behind from the last test.
Its the ultimate anti-virus application. Start off each web session with a known clean OS image.
Maybe a stripped-down server install of Linux running a VM for Windows XP Pro might be the ultimate way to operate Internet Explorer! (or maybe the only safe way!)
