Rey Bango

> Which they do, they've been offering complete VM images with various combinations of Windows and IE for some time, the current offering is XP + IE6, Vista + IE7, Win7 + IE8 and Win7 + IE9 I've used the IEVMs project on github to install these VMs before; it failed. I'm trying it again as we speak, maybe it's a viable solution, maybe not. > IE9's devtools are significantly better than IE8's: more feature and much more stability. They are nowhere near WDT/Firebug yet (or even Dragonfly), but they are a huge improvement over the POS that IE8's devtools are. Obviously the problem here is that IE9 represents 25% of the currently in-use IE browsers and has (to quote rey bango, http://blog.reybango.com/2012/05/08/hey-paydirt-your-site-works-just-f… 35% world-wide Win7 marketshare, which as I saw somewhere (maybe arstechnica) only has 50% marketshare. So you're looking at ~17.5% give or take for other versions of windows running IE9, call it a conservative 25% adoption for all IEs across the web. TL:DR; IE9 has a ways to go before it's new amazing developer tools are valued significantly. Until then, we're still stuck with IE6-8 ): You make valid points; and the VMs available on their site should help testing availability. It's too bad that the debugging is still second-class and torture ):

Zed Shaw has some guidelines about that http://learnpythonthehardway.org. You'll learn some basic programming in a very good and versatile language. I learned web programming a few years ago. In my opinion, I gained about a 3 weeks head-start in productivity by choosing PHP, but I ended up making up for it for the next 3 years. There are other commendable books geared towards beginner programmers, but only a few that also target web enabled languages come to mind. JavaScript: http://eloquentjavascript.net/ (I recommend the interactive HTML version). Ruby: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ If I were to begin programming with the goal of working in the web today, I would love that someone pointed me to any of these 3 resources. Like I said there are other beginner books and online tutorials using languages that aren't usual for the web like The Little Schemer (Scheme). It's always a plus. You'll need to learn to use a good text editor or an IDE. I'm biased toward Vim, it takes time, but it's a good investment. You'll need to learn HTML and some CSS. There are countless lists of recommendations out there for best books on x. Just checkout StackOverflow with similar queries for JavaScript, CSS and HTML. e.g. http://blog.reybango.com/2010/12/15/what-to-read-to-get-up-to-speed-in… You'll need to learn to interact with databases. You'll need to learn some SQL. However, I've been doing this for quite some time and I've only recently been playing with…

Per the blog post listed from modern.ie, the IE6 VMs expire after 90 days and the others become crippled after 90 days. Sounds like more of the same. http://blog.reybango.com/2013/02/04/making-internet-explorer-testing-e…