Running multiple versions of Safari?

[MrPink1138]

You'll have to forgive me if this is a stupid question.
I'm a web developer and long-time PC guru (aka Mac newbie). I just recently purchased my first Mac (an iBook) so I can test websites on Mac browsers and cuz OSX rocks.

It's my experience that Safari 1.2 has lots of quirks and bugs that 1.3 doesn't have. I really want to upgrade my browser to 1.3 but I'd also like to keep 1.2 around so I can use it to test on. Is there a way to install multiple versions of Safari, perhaps in different folders or for different user profiles?

If anyone's done this or knows how and can help me out that'd be great.

 

[jimoblak]

Why test for an old version of Safari?

If the user is online, they will have software update enabled and should receive updates to Safari as they are made available.

Sorry - I am little help - but I just don't see why you would want to cater to old users. This is not like keeping Netscape 4 on your computer to test pre-CSS days.

You may want to invest in an external hard drive that can have an OS loaded on it. I run different OSs from different external drives for my development testing. It may be overkill for just maintaining different versions of Safari but it would work.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[MrPink1138]

Why cater to old users? Because my client uses Safari 1.2.
I agree with you but the client pays the bills. For whatever reason they haven't updated to the newest version and when I suggested that, the response was basically... "well it should work in all versions"
Thanks for the idea... I just shelled out a bunch of cash for the iBook though so I'm looking for a way to do it without buying extra hardware.

 

[SYQUEST]

You can partion the hard drive into multiple volumes and have a different version on each if you want. Plus a different OS version to boot! This won't cost you a cent.

But remember you always move forward by backing up!

....JIM....

 

[ObviousTroll]

Since Apple apps are self contained, you could also just copy the old safari to a different folder and rename it "Safari 1.2" or some such.

the only downside here is that Safari makes extensive use of built in OS features so, really, the only complete solution is to do what Syquest suggests - make an extra disk partition that has the same version of the OS that your client is using.