After getting my testing server up and running, I needed a way to test for IE6. Yes, I’m on Windows – but Windows 7 never shipped with IE6 or 7, unlike Vista – so standalone solutions no longer work. I just found a program that solves this issue – and is able to render pages simulating IE5.5-8. IETester v0.4.2 is the current version, though it has been out since March of 2009. Somehow, it entirely missed my radar – probably because I was still running XP and didn’t broaden my queries.

I should say this: IE6 support doesn’t come for free. Clients whose user-base is heavy in the IE6 department can’t afford to not support those users. So, while I can develop for such users – they won’t be getting the same experience – and certainly not without an increased cost. It is my job to push internet standards, including A-level, modern browsers; efficiencies in development/production cut costs over the long-run especially for larger clients. When I have to dick around making tweaks because one idiot browser still won’t die, it’s annoying. For all business owners, large and small: please entertain this suggestion:

Encourage your users to upgrade their browsers.

Obnoxious/semi-invasive design via javascript-based browser sniffing would do wonders to bump browsers into gear. Hell, even showing a simple survey that asks “Do you ride a dinosaur to work? Why do you use an ancient browser?” followed by multiple choices that lead back to a site that encourages browser upgrades.

This tangent is officially over.

I had been running Sun’s Virtual Machine with an XP installation to do IE6 testing, but this alternative has made things easier. The only real issue is sharing files between the host – Windows 7 – and the guest – Windows XP in the VM. That shouldn’t be too difficult, but time is important and I’d rather stick with what works for now.

With that said, my nose is back to the grindstone (though it won’t really move much at all).

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 71 bytes) in /home/milwaul0/public_html/drupal/includes/theme.inc on line 729

Confounded, I searched the internet and found this:

http://drupal.org/node/283579

The first option (making a php.ini file in the root) appears to need a restart of the webserver, so I tried the second option, allocating more memory to php via drupal using:

ini_set(‘memory_limit’, ’64M’); in the sites/default/settings.php file

But before that, I had to change the permissions of the file, which had been set to 555 (default, by the site admin I assume).

I initially set the memory to 64M to make sure it would work, since 33554432 bytes is 32MB. After it worked, I noticed that the permissions for the file had been reset to 555, so I changed that again and allocated 32MB for php. It worked. If ever any problems arise, I’ll know what to do.

What’s weird is that this error was triggered while allocating 71 bytes. I don’t know why there was even an issue… anyone?