[internet-explorer] Online Internet Explorer Simulators

(Tried to find simular questions / duplicates, failed)

I develop on a mac. I love my mac. I develop using Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. I love them all for different reasons.

But I have to develop for Internet Explorer users as well.

I know, I am not unique here.

I enjoy using the webkit inspector / firebug to mess with CSS. One of the biggest issues I've found when testing ie6-8 is the inability to edit CSS on the fly. The back and forth to a VM or an actual pc, trying something in CSS, saving, reloading in IE, failing, and repeating, leads to a slow development process.

So, on to my actual question.

Is there any sort of online emulator/simulator for various internet explorer versions? Something that somehow renders the page using the ie engine, but still allows me to use my inspector?

Is this even possible?

Adobe Contribute provides a snapshot service also, but it's not free.

Here's the developer toolbar for IE 6 and 7.

By way of reference, here is another screenshot rendering tool: https://browserlab.adobe.com/

It also does a number of other browsers and platforms as well, and provides a few nice little options like onion skinning etc.

Note: It seems that recently Internet Explorer 6 was removed, which makes it considerably less useful :S

Something like BrowserShots?

http://www.browserstack.com

It really works great, but you only have 30 minutes/month for free.

For 19$/month you have unlimited time.

Have you tried this: IE NetRenderer

Here is another idea for you. It is also online w/ no download. It uses window 7 + ie9 with no flash support though ie9 online

I've been using IE Tester (good) but didn't know I could simply switch versions in IE. It's nice to know the browser voted "Most likely to be the bain of your existence" has the tool built in to look at previous versions.

The down side to IE Tester is it does not support javascript well, and also doesn't always do a great job with iframes. (Yes, I still use them.)

I decided that since Google and Facebook no longer support IE7, I won't either. I have a lot less funding than they do.

I know this doesn't fix the need to use VM for MAC users, but there should be ways around that too. With an 8 core processor PC computer, you can VM MAC with 4 cores, same for PC, and run 4 displays, two for each OS. Expensive, but this is our business. In most business models, it is not uncommon to spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment. We shouldn't think of ourselves any differently. Invest in your success.

I just realized that there's yet another option. I've heard a lot of good things about this service: Litmus Alkaline.

"Alkaline tests your website designs across 17 different Windows browsers right from your Mac desktop in seconds. No need for virtual machines, Windows licenses, or any messing around with Windows Update."

Just stick with the virtual machine: If you're running Internet Explorer 8 you'll be able to activate the developer window using F12. There you're able to edit CSS as well as HTML on the fly without saving/reloading the page.

If you have enough space on your hard-disk in your OS-X of Apple, then you could install virtualbox for Mac-OS-X after download at http://virtualbox.org

Then you would need "only" 100 GB to create with this virtualbox as virtual harddisk. Then install for intentions of tests simply for 1 month-free-testtime a Windows of your choice - Vista or 7 or 8 - together with internet explorer ...

You dont need to buy Windows for this as long as you dont test longer than one month - when testing time is expired it is not tragic at all, you simply can repeat a new testing-time ...

This looks trivial but with virtualbox you have a real-time-testing-area in this case with IE - no matter which version of IE !

Use wine - it has IE6 with Gecko support built into it. More information here.