mtp123
02-22-2009, 11:04 PM
One of the easiest ways to test Flash Web Designs (http://www.intellixmedia.com/flash-web-design.htm) site so that you can see how it appears under Linux is to run Linux from a CD or DVD. There are numerous Linux "live" CDs around; see the Free Linux LiveCD Distributions page for a list of them. These allow you to simply boot your machine from the CD directly into Linux without having to install anything onto your hard disk. Essentially, all you have to do is to download an ISO of the Linux distribution (which is just an image of the CD), burn it to your CDR, put it in your CD or DVD drive, and restart your computer. The computer boots from the CD and runs Linux without installing anything on your hard disk. From the CDROM, you can run many Linux applications, including the Linux version of Firefox and Konqueror.
If you are feeling lazy, and you have installed an emulator or a virtual machine, as mentioned above, you don't even need to burn the ISO to a CD. You can simply use the virtual machine to boot the ISO - your copy of Linux will then run in the virtual machine.
Alternatively, if you prefer to install Linux on your hard disk, using one of the many free Linux distributions around, you can set it up so that it co-exists with Windows. Make sure you have space for a new partition on your hard disk, install it and you're done. Yet another way is to install Linux in a virtual machine.
The default browser that comes on many Linux distributions is Firefox (although not necessarily so). However, you will find that even though Firefox basically renders your page identically for all platforms, the fonts available under Linux are different from those available on Windows. If you don't code your font tags or CSS font-families in a cross-platform compatible way, your site may wind up being rendered with an ugly font. For example, many sites simply specify "Arial" or "Impact" or some such Windows font for their site. Since these fonts are not available by default under non-Windows systems, including Mac and Linux, your site will be rendered using either the default font on those browsers or some other font that the browser thinks matches the type of font you've specified. If you don't want to bother to run Linux to test, be sure that you at least:
Test your pages under Firefox for your platform.
If you are feeling lazy, and you have installed an emulator or a virtual machine, as mentioned above, you don't even need to burn the ISO to a CD. You can simply use the virtual machine to boot the ISO - your copy of Linux will then run in the virtual machine.
Alternatively, if you prefer to install Linux on your hard disk, using one of the many free Linux distributions around, you can set it up so that it co-exists with Windows. Make sure you have space for a new partition on your hard disk, install it and you're done. Yet another way is to install Linux in a virtual machine.
The default browser that comes on many Linux distributions is Firefox (although not necessarily so). However, you will find that even though Firefox basically renders your page identically for all platforms, the fonts available under Linux are different from those available on Windows. If you don't code your font tags or CSS font-families in a cross-platform compatible way, your site may wind up being rendered with an ugly font. For example, many sites simply specify "Arial" or "Impact" or some such Windows font for their site. Since these fonts are not available by default under non-Windows systems, including Mac and Linux, your site will be rendered using either the default font on those browsers or some other font that the browser thinks matches the type of font you've specified. If you don't want to bother to run Linux to test, be sure that you at least:
Test your pages under Firefox for your platform.