SuperWasp

Productivity tips, reviews, tools, software and gadgets.

IE Tester - Test your sites against IE8, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5

IETester is a free tool to test your websites against all major versions of Internet Explorer. It has the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 2, IE7, IE6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP.

Download: IETester v0.2.3 (24Mb)

Labels: browser, CSS, developer, IE, IE6, IE7, IE8, Microsoft, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Fix: Localhost unavailable with ESET NOD32

Developers using Visual Studio will probably encounter this problem after installing ESET NOD32 antivirus or ESET Smart Security Antivirus+Firewall: browsing the web with Internet Explorer works fine except for websites you develop yourself (localhost).

Disabling the firewall or antivirus features doesn't solve this problem, however replacing localhost with 127.0.0.1 (or using FireFox) does solve it.

The real problem is easily fixed though.

Windows Vista:

In the start menu, type "notepad %system%\drivers\etc\hosts" and instead of pressing enter, right-click on the notepad icon in the top of the list (see screenshot). In the context menu you must click on "Run as administrator".

Windows XP and 2000:

Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type these commands:

cd %system%\drivers\etc

attrib -r -h -s hosts

notepad hosts

You will then see the following file in notepad:

The last line contains the problem. It reads:

::1             localhost

You can either remove this line and save the file, or comment it out with a pound/hash character #. Voila, fixed!

Labels: Administrator, fix, IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft, problem, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008, web develoment, Windows, Windows Vista

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, March 21, 2008 | PermaLink | 2 comments

New VirtualPC images released for IE6 and IE7

As expected, Microsoft has released updated VirtualPC hard disk images with IE6 and IE7. These contain a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, and either IE6 or IE7 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. For more information on installing and using these images, read the blog post about running IE6 and IE7 on a single machine.

These new images will expire on December 7, 2007. By that time Microsoft will probably release updated images again.

Remember that you can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for free!

Labels: IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, Virtual PC 2007, VPC, VPC2007

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

IE Developer Toolbar 1.0 Final Released

Microsoft has released the final release (v1.0) of the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.

For those of you who are not familiar with the IE Developer Toolbar, here's a bit of info:

Overview

The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides several features for exploring and understanding Web pages. These features enable you to:

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.


• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.


• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.


• View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.


• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.


• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.


• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.


• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.


• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.


• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.


• Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.


• View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS.


• The Developer Toolbar can be pinned to the Internet Explorer browser window or floated separately.

Although there aren't any major new features since beta 3, they've added some reliability fixes and polished the whole toolbar a bit.

Release Notes:

• If Internet Explorer is running while you install the Developer Toolbar,
  you must restart Internet Explorer before the Developer Toolbar will work properly.


• The Developer Toolbar icon may not be visible by default.  If you
  do not see it after restarting Internet Explorer, click the right-facing
  arrows at the end of the IE7 command bar to view all available toolbar
  buttons.


• Some menu items are unavailable (grayed out) when running Internet
  Explorer in Protected Mode on Windows Vista.  To use those options,
  temporarily turn off Protected Mode or right-click the Internet Explorer
  icon in the Programs menu and choose 'Run as administrator'.


• In IE6 or in IE7 with tabbed browsing off, using the validation links
  will navigate the current window to the validation page.  To launch the
  validation links in a new window, open the Tools menu, click Internet Options..., and uncheck "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts" in the Advanced tab, or use IE7 with tabbed browsing enabled.

» Download Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar 1.0

Labels: CSS, developer, DOM, html, IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft, toolbar

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, May 11, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

IE6 & IE7 VirtualPC Images 2.0 released

Microsoft just published two new VPC Hard Disk Images for testing websites on IE on Windows XP SP2:

• Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) VPC


• Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) VPC

These VPC hard disk images contain pre-activated Windows XP SP2, and either IE6 or IE7 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. These VPC images will expire on 08/17/2007, but by that time Microsoft will have released a newer version.

Once you have completed the download, double-click file to expand the VHD file. Start Virtual PC and create a new VPC, and point to the files you just expanded.

A few people were encountering a non-genuine Windows warning from the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notification Tool. Microsoft did not install the WGA Notification tool on the image this time around. Instead, these images have had their product keys deactivated, thus they don’t pass the WGA tests.

Remember that you can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for free! Virtual PC 2007 runs on: Windows Vista™ Business; Windows Vista™ Enterprise; Windows Vista™ Ultimate; Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition; Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition; Windows XP Professional; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition; or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Labels: download, free, IE6, IE7, Microsoft, Virtual PC 2007, Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Inline Search for IE

The winner of the Microsoft add-on contest is known! It is the excellent Inline Search, that you can download for free.

Site: http://www.ieforge.com/InlineSearch/HomePage

Labels: add-on, download, free, IE6, IE7, inline search

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  Posted by oVan on Saturday, March 17, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

From a post by Pete LePage:


Many of you have asked how to run IE6 and IE7 in a side by side environment. As Chris Wilson blogged about early this year, it’s unfortunately not so easy to do. There are workarounds, but they are unsupported and don’t necessarily work the same way as IE6 or IE7 would work when installed properly. As Chris said, the best way to use multiple versions of IE on one machine is via virtualization. Microsoft has recently made Virtual PC 2004 a free download; we’ve taken advantage of that by releasing a VPC virtual machine image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit to help facilitate your testing and development. The image is time bombed and will no longer function after April 1, 2007. We hope to continue to provide these images in the future as a service to web developers.

Now you can install IE7 on your main machine for development, and get all the advantages of IE7, like the RSS platform, native XMLHTTP stack, and improved security, while still running IE6 simultaneously in the VPC on the same computer. Most importantly, you don’t even have to buy an additional Windows license. The VPC image runs in a virtual machine that offers all of the functionality of a full IE6 installation without giving it any access to its host machine’s hard drive, registry, etc. You can make as many modifications as you want to the virtual machine without affecting your host installation at all.

Included in the VPC image are:

• Windows XP Professional SP2 + high-priority fixes through November 2006


• Internet Explorer 6.0


• Internet Explorer 7 Readiness Toolkit 2.0

While we’ve released a VPC image today with Windows XP SP2, we’re also investigating creating other VPC images, for example IE5, IE5.5, IE6 and IE6 SP1, as well as versions of IE on different language operating systems.

Get more information on Virtual PC 2004
Download Virtual PC 2004
Download the Internet Explorer 6 Testing VPC Image

One more note - VPC 2004 doesn’t run on Windows Vista, but this image will work fine with VPC 2007, which is in beta now. You can get this free beta via Connect.
Happy testing!
PEte LePage
Product Manager

Transmit your pdf docs into charts with pdf to excel software. Also using a pdf server will save you  time. Get the details of a pdf file conversion tool and how it was created. If you are using all Microsoft applications then you can convert pdf to doc as well. Here you can get useful tips on purchasing new programs and what to look for.

Labels: 2004, 2007, activated, beta, download, free, IE6, IE7, license, PC, RSS, SP2, Virtual, Vista, VPC, Windows, XMLHTTP, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, December 01, 2006 | PermaLink | 0 comments