How can I test my website in an old version of Safari on OS X?

Question

Apple doesn’t seem to offer downloads of older versions of Safari, and I’m not even sure they would install on Mac OS X, as Safari seems to be part of the OS like Internet Explorer is on Windows.

Is there any way to test my website on old versions of Safari? I need to fully test (i.e. click around, try out JavaScript), so a screenshot service wouldn’t cut it.

Solution 1

Michel Fortin’s Multi-Safari looks like a good bet. 3.0.4 worked great for me on Snow Leopard.

(Bonus question: did Michel Fortin work on Markdown?)

Solution 2

Browserstack seems to be the fastest way to test versions 4/5 of Safari at this point without spinning up a VM.

Comments

[Fernando]

The only problem with these is that it appears they must be used on the original versions of OS X. Or just none of them work on 10.8...

[Joe Dargie]

@Mike: most of them work pretty well on 10.6. You’ll notice from the table near the bottom of the page that only the Snow Leopard version of Safari 4 works on 10.8.

[Abhi Beckert]

@Ross according to John Gruber (the creator of Markdown): "Michel Fortin has ported Markdown to PHP; it’s a splendid port, and highly recommended for anyone looking for a PHP implementation of Markdown."

[Brent O'Connor]

Anyone know of a solution that works on OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)?

[Han Seoul-Oh]

@Brent FYI on Mavericks, only Safari 4.0.5 works, for some reason (but it does, and I was able to reproduce the Safari 5 bug I was hoping to)

[Imran Bughio]

"I’m no longer making up-to-date version of Multi-Safari" :(

[Joe Dargie]

@ImranBughio: that’s the way the world’s going. Running old software requires old hardware. (Of course, the easy de-coupling of hardware and software might be viewed as a historical anomaly in the first place.)

[Chris Pink]

bloody expensive

[GFargo]

@ChrisPin When it comes to quality assurance testing suites; I've found you get what you pay for. Admittedly I've been privileged by working for larger businesses who don't mind investing $30/mo for a comprehensive testing suite. That being said there are multiple 'Free' alternatives that can be found here, or here.

[Akansh]

Not having support for latest OS.

[animaonline]

@PaulD.Waite "Running old software requires old hardware" never heard that one before.

[Joe Dargie]

@animaonline: of course not, I only just said it in August 2014!

[animaonline]

@PaulD.Waite haha

[Kyle]

I know this is an old answer, but Browserstack is really slow nowadays. 2 - 3 FPS and 2 - 3 second latency is unsuable.