Tag Archive for 'Mac'

Using Bazaar On a Mac

Published on March 4, 2009 in Techniques. 6 Comments Tags: , , , .

Bazaar has become a tool I’m using all the time. Using Bazaar as a version control system means using a command line interface. I haven’t found a feature-rich Bazaar GUI tool like the ones that exist for Subversion. I feel alright with using a command line interface for executing commands; but it is frustrating to edit text, review diffs, and manage merges in a command line environment. It just sucks! I want something better: a work-flow that keeps me productive, and an appropriate interface for the task at hand. Specifically, I want my version control system to be integrated with my Mac and the existing tools I use; I want to be able to:

  • Manage my files and folders using Finder
  • Write commit messages, view diffs, and manager merges in TextWrangler

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Browser Testing IE On a Mac

Published on January 28, 2009 in Techniques. 13 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

For the past couple of years I’ve been trying to get a reasonable setup for testing Internet Explorer on my Mac. With the recent release of IE 8 RC1, I thought it might be a good time to revisit my browser testing setup.

I use an Apple Macbook (the black one) with OS X 10.5 and 4GB of RAM as my sole machine. With my Mac I should be able create a reasonable setup to test all major web browsers. I’m less interested in testing all OS and browser combinations simply because that seems unreasonable for most projects.

Operating System and Browser Testing Combinations

The following is the list of OS and browser combinations I want to be able to test; each OS has browsers listed in the order of which I care most about supporting:

  • OS X 10.5
    • Firefox 3
    • Safari 3
  • Windows XP
    • IE 7
    • IE 8
    • Firefox 3
    • IE 6
    • Firefox 2

Developing on a Mac, I’m always running things in OS X 10.5 / Firefox 3, making the combination always supported. I will also occasionally checkout how Safari 3 is doing while developing, although it’s usually fine.

When in browser testing mode (not developing new features) I’ll run through the Windows XP / Firefox 3 and Windows XP / Firefox 2 combinations; mainly to checkout how the font-renderings are holding up in Windows.

Then comes IE testing. I start with IE 7 which I find not too difficult to get working, usually just have to fix the hasLayout issues. With IE 8 coming into the mix soon I’m going to start testing it; hoping that it will be even easier to get working than IE 7. JavaScript frameworks like YUI are pushing hard to support IE 8; which is great as the CSS support in IE 8 seems to be much better than in IE 7. Of course the hardest of all to get working, IE 6; some projects need to support it no matter what, others can just not worry about it (like my personal web page).

I feel that I’ve found a testing setup that will allow me to carry out my browser testing process much easier than I could in the past.

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