Question

We have a question that have come into the Mechanical MOOC feedback e-mail. Anyone know the answer?
"I have IDLE already installed, however it's running Python 3.3. For this mechanical mooc, Python 2.6.6 is required, which I have also downloaded. Do I need to install ANOTHER version of IDLE to run 2.6.6??"

Answer 1

You should get a new IDLE shortcut when you install the new version of python, if not, all you need to do is create one that points to the 2.6.6 directory of python.

Answer 2

Hi - this was my question. I'm not getting any shortcuts when I installed the 2.6.6 version. Can you explain specifically how I create a shortcut? Thanks!

Answer 3

I am a bit unclear as to why shortcuts are not being created on your system (what is your operating system?)

In any case, I think you might get problems running 3.3 alongside 2.6.6 especially in Windows (eg things like double clicking a .py file and it running in 3.3)

Unless you have a specific need for 3.3 I would uninstall it for now and just install 2.6.6 (actually 2.7.3 should also be fine and possibly a better choice).

Answer 4

Create a shortcut as you would for any other program, assuming a windows environment, create a new shortcut whose target is your pythonw.exe in the installation directory of the version you wish to execute.
However, if you are merely looking for an IDE then I would suggest you have a look at pyscripter as it supports multiple versions. http://code.google.com/p/pyscripter/

Answer 5

I'm on a mac - Mountain Lion OSX 10.8.2......

Answer 6

Try locating your installation directory and execute the idle.py script directly.
<Python install>/Lib/idlelib/idle.py

Answer 7

The easiest method for me was to just install 2.6.6 and make sure I got IDLE 2.6.6.....so now I'm set for the class. The other IDLE crash when I open preferences, so actually 2.6.6 works the best for me. Thanks for everyone's help! I'll be asking a lot of questions when the class starts...fyi.