Despite the belief that Flash/Flex applications run the same in all browsers, this is not always the case. I’ve recently run into some issues with Internet Explorer 7 (surprise, surprise). Most experienced developers probably already use virtual machines, but it can be a great tool for beginner/intermediate developers as well.
“a virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (computer) that executes programs like a real machine.” …”Virtual machines can also perform the role of an emulator, allowing software applications and operating systems written for another computer processor architecture to be run.”
- Wikipedia
Basically this means that you can create multiple “computers” on your computer, and install different operating systems on each, that run ‘independently’ from each other. Depending on the VM software you use, you will have more or less options like dragging and dropping between machines, and a whole host of other tools. Our focus here will be to simply run web apps in different browsers, on different operating systems.
here are some VM options: I personally have experience with Parallels Desktop which is easy to set up, and works great.
