Running Internet Explorer 6 Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 on the same machine

Question

Like everyone else  I need to test my code on Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7  Now Internet Explorer 8 has some great tools for developer  which I d like to use  I d also like to start testing my code with Internet Explorer 8  as it will soon be released   The question is  how to run Internet Explorer 6  Internet Explorer 7  and Internet Explorer 8 on the same machine  So far with Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 I ve been using Multiple IE  But people have reported  see comments on the page linked in the previous sentence  issue with Internet Explorer 6 after installing Internet Explorer 8  Those errors are related to focus in form fields  Running Internet Explorer 7 wouldn t matter so much as Internet Explorer 8 can use the Internet Explorer 7 rendering engine  but we still need Internet Explorer 6   How to run Internet Explorer 6  Internet Explorer 7  and Internet Explorer 8 on the same machine

User · Answer

I would also suggest running a few virtual machines rather than running multiple versions of Internet Explorer on the same instance of Windows.

Microsoft provides Virtual PC disk images with Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 at the Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image download page.

The current list of virtual disk images available from the above link are:

Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP SP3
Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP SP3
Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP SP3
Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista
Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista

(List is current as of October 11, 2009. All versions have expiration dates.)

User · Answer

If you have IE8 installed in your machine  you can test how your site works in IE7 too  When you are in the page you need to test in IE7 browser  Open  Tools -  developer tools   And then in the menu of that  Developer tools  dialog box  Click on  Browser Mode  CURRENT MODE   and there you can select 3 options  that is     IE7  IE8 IE8 Compatibility Mode

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On my Mac OS X machine I use Sun s VirtualBox wich is free   I run 3 WinXP virtual boxes and assign 256K to each  See this tutorial    http   www 10voltmedia com blog 2008 12 screencast-install-internet-explorer-on-osx-using-virtualbox

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To check all versions of Internet Explorer you can go to codecpack nl and install all versions of Internet Explorer  that is  IE collection    Or you can use www multibrowserviewer com  It can check in 45 browsers and 3 OSes

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I ve been struggling with this problem for a while  Virtualization would be a good solution  but it s too slow for my needs  A laptop can only handle so much  running a development environment alongside Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and then trying to do virtualization while connected to a plethora of servers and with a lot of other things going on in the background is    well    slow   I have the following setup now that solves the problem gracefully  although it is a bit expensive  it s worth it    One Macbook connected to an external display One Windows desktop  with Windows XP and Windows Vista installed dual boot   Both machines run Synergy  sharing the keyboard and mouse across machines  so I can easily switch between the two  Since they re separate computer I don t have any performance issues and can happily Photoshop along on my Mac while my Windows machine still has each and every browser running    This setup covers most of browsers in graded browser support as defined by Yahoo  http   developer yahoo com yui articles gbs    Browsers    Firefox 2 Mac Firefox 3 Mac Firefox 3 windows Firefox 2 Windows Webkit nightly Mac Safari 3 Windows Safari 4 Mac Google Chrome Latest version Windows Opera latest version Windows Opera latest version Mac Internet Explorer 6  on the XP part of the Windows machine  Internet Explorer 8 w  IE7 compatibility mode  on the Vista part of the Windows machine    E-mail clients covered    Apple Mail Thunderbird    Firefox rendering engine  on the XP machine  Outlook Express    IE6 rendering engine Outlook 2003  on the XP machine  Outlook 2007  on the Vista machine  All the popular web clients on all the browsers mentioned above  Live mail  Gmail  Yahoo  mail    Things this setup doesn t cover    I don t have Mac OS 10 4 I only test the latest version of Opera  not any earlier versions  due to it s small userbase  I test Safari 3 and Safari 4  both one on Windows and one on the Mac  not both versions on both platforms  Now  Safari 4 is still in beta anyway  and Safari always has and had a very good rendering engine  As for e-mail clients  I ve never bothered testing Lotus Notes   You can check out a video of the setup here

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I did this on my Windows 7 computer today    Installed Windows Virtual PC  and ran XP Mode Created two Windows XP images  One with Internet Explorer 6 and one with Internet Explorer 7  Now I can run these to browsers from my Windows 7 desktop  Just like any other application  No need to open Virtual PC    http   www microsoft com windows virtual-pc

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Also have a look at Microsoft s Compatibility Inspector  which will give you warnings of issues that will affect your sites backwards compatibility     http   ie microsoft com testdrive html5 compatinspector

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There is also CrossBrowserTesting  which supports many browsers  seems to work without installing any plugins on your computer  and also includes a very neat layout comparison tool   CrossBrowserTesting was advertised from within Browsershots

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I use http   www spoon net browsers  Windows-only    You can run IE8  IE7  IE6  Firefox 3 5  Firefox 3  Firefox 2  Safari 4  Safari 3  Opera 10  Opera 9  Chrome   You just need to install a plugin  and then click on the corresponding icon  It will download and run the files needed to run each of the above mentioned browsers

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I use Virtual PC to run an instance of windows where I have IE6 installed  It s a bit clumsier than having different versions in the same computer  but it s a 100  working IE6  Multiple IE works fine for most testing  but it s lacking that last few percents   Don t work too much to get the page looking right in IE8  it still has some glitches that most likely will be fixed in the final release

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Someone I know created a portable version of IE8 using thinstall  now it s bought by vmware and called thinapp   only 1 8 MB   Thinstall creates a virtualized application with a virtual filesystem builtin and is the perfect solution to DLL hell  The whole app runs from a single exe file   This is untested against other versions install  I might add   http   rapidshare com files 247957494 IE8 Portable Thinstall exe

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Microsoft now offers virtual images that you can use in your choice of software to run IE8 and other legacy software   http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 11575  A fairly large download but works wonderfully   Requires a valid version of Windows 7 to work fwiw

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modern IE is an undertaking by Microsoft to make cross-browser testing for the Internet Explorer browsers easier  Microsoft has created modern IE to provide developers and designers with a suite of tools to facilitate IE browser testing   With modern IE you have two methods of testing your website in IE  First  modern IE offers you three months free usage of the web-based browser testing service BrowserStack  You just need a Facebook account to login and start testing   The second method modern IE offers is a virtualization image of each browser from IE 6 to IE 10  which can be run on virtualization software like VirtualBox  Virtual PC  Hyper-V or VMWare Player on WIndows  Mac or Linux   Additionally  modern IE also provides a tool which scans your web page for common coding problems and lists them out for you to correct so that they display correctly in all IE versions   Source  modern IE - Cross-Browser IE Testing Tools Suite

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I ve installed Virutal PC according to Donavon s tutorial but it seems that my laptop s BIOS doesn t support Hardware Virtualization  and it s required to run Virtual PC  So  make sure your equipment supports that before you go any further wirh Virtual PC

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Use Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image    Download it from Microsoft Download Center link

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Very good option is update to Internet Explorer 10  You will find very useful developers tools including compatibility with from IE5 to IE 10 including quirks mode  If switch the IE version i menu  the page rendering of the page is changing immediately   Very good feature of this mode is javascript and HTML  firebug like  debugger  which works in compatibility mode  It means  you can debug javascript in very old IE with the newest debugger  which is very cool feature  You cannot do that with virtual machine  Yes  you can have virtual machine for checking the final result

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Somewhat related  you should consider running your site past BrowserShots when it is almost done  see how it looks in dozens of browsers on hundreds of configurations

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VMWare Player is a free alternative to Oracle VirtualBox and Microsoft VirtualPC   As with the mentions of VirtualBox you ll need to create your own images of OS browser  though   VMWare Player is here  http   www vmware com products player

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As Eduardo mentioned  the recently announced Microsoft SuperPreview is a tool that lets you view how web pages are rendered in many different browsers  even if they aren t installed locally   For example  you can see how your page looks in Internet Explorer 6  Internet Explorer 7  Internet Explorer 8  Firefox  and Safari  even if you don t have those browsers installed

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Multiple IE http   tredosoft com Multiple IE Will install ie up to 6  without disrupting current installation  i have 7 and it left it as it is   Now I need to find a way to run 8 on top of all that  6 and 7 already run fine thanks to that little app above   only tested on XP

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I wouldn t do it  Use virtual PCs instead  It might take a little setup  but you ll thank yourself in the long run  In my experience  you can t really get them cleanly installed side by side and unless they are standalone installs you can t really verify that it is 100  true-to-browser rendering  Update  Looks like one of the better ways to accomplish this  if running Windows 7  is using Windows XP mode to set up multiple virtual machines  Testing Multiple Versions of IE on one PC at the IEBlog  Update 2   11 2014  There are new solutions since this was last updated  Microsoft now provides VMs for any environment to test multiple versions of IE  Modern IE

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Firefox has an add-in that will render a webpage the same as if it was in Internet Explorer 5 5 6 7 8 beta 2     IE NET Renderer  Edit   This looks like it only does screenshots so it may not be very useful   Good for making sure your layout isn t broken  but not much else

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There is one elegant way to run IE6  IE7 and IE8 on the same machine  called virtual PC   First download virtual PC from Microsoft website here  http   www microsoft com downloadS details aspx FamilyID 04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6 amp displaylang en  Then download 3 EXE files with IE6  IE7 and IE8 here http   www microsoft com downloads details aspx FamilyId 21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF amp displaylang en  Install them on your PC and test your web applications  Saved me days of looking for similar solutions

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What about using App-V  http   www microsoft com systemcenter appv default mspx  In particular Dynamic Application Virtualization http   www microsoft com systemcenter appv dynamic mspx  It virtualizes at the application level   It is useful when running incompatible software on the same OS instance

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For windows users there is Windows XP Mode which allows you to run multiple versions of IE on a Windows 7 Professional  Enterprise  or Ultimate edition   http   blogs msdn com b ie archive 2011 02 04 testing-multiple-versions-of-ie-on-one-pc aspx

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Backing up the other users  you will need to run Virtual PC instances on your Windows box  If you try to do a multi install of Internet Explorer  you will break conditional comments on pages  which will make testing difficult anyway  For example  With Internet Explorer 5  6 and 7  On a Windows box  the IF Internet Explorer statements will resolve to Internet Explorer 7 even in Internet Explorer 5  which means even more weird bugs   More information and a link to download and run a Internet Explorer 6 Virtual Image  http   blogs msdn com ie archive 2007 04 17 ie7-virtual-pc-image-and-ie6-virtual-pc-image-refresh aspx  If you have Virtual PC already  here is the image   http   www microsoft com Downloads details aspx FamilyID 21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef amp displaylang en

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Try http   finalbuilds edskes net iecollection htm      Utilu IE Collection contains multiple IE versions  which are standalone so they can be used at the same time       Conditional Comments work exactly the same as in the native versions  The original version number is shown correctly in the User Agent string  The version number can be found in the window title too       Utilu IE Collection also includes the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar 1 00 2189 0  This Explorer Bar provides a variety of tools which make troubleshooting websites easier  The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is compatible with Internet Explorer 5 0 and higher when using Windows 2000 or higher       Utilu IE Collection has the option to install the Firebug Web Development Extension for Internet Explorer  Firebug provides a lot of useful tools which make web development easier

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Nobody mentioned this  but IETester is a great tool  It supports Internet Explorer 5 5  6  7 and 8RC1  The rendering matches the corresponding browsers  At least I haven t found any discrepancies yet    I normally use it to do a basic check of the layout  I still need VMs to debug JavaScript or to use the Developer Toolbar with a specific Internet Explorer version

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You can t use IE8 to replace IE7  The JavaScript engine in IE8 is never the same as in IE7  Try leaving trailing commas in array or object literals in both IE7 and IE8 - you ll get an error in the former  but not the latter even in compatibility mode  If you want your site to work in IE7  you need to test in IE7

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Run IE6  IE7  and IE8 on the Same Machine Using Windows 7 XP Mode  http   articles sitepoint com article ie6-ie7-ie8-win7-xp-mode

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Try using IE Tab    Firefox   Chrome Extension http   www ietab net home

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You can use the new MS Expression Web SuperPreview    source  istartedsomething com     If you do not want to spend money on MS Expression Web  you can download Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview for Windows Internet Explorer completely free  The only restriction is that after the trial expires you can t compare to non IE browsers

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Here is the official microsoft VM images for doing IE 6  7  8 and 9 testing  http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 11575

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The best and probably only solution is probably IE tester that could be found at ietester dot com It uses the IEengines for all IE 6  7 and 8  And I have not found any discrepancies yet

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A colleague of mine recommended Internet Explorer Collection   It appears to work without issues  but I m far from a power user   It also supports installing IE 1      through 8

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This does not directly answer your question  but have you had a look at Litmus  We tend to use it mostly for testing HTML CSS compatibility across multiple browsers  supported by Litmus

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I found a new tool that makes this Really REALLY easy     Use IE9 Developer mode   push F12     Up in the File Menu  you can see Browser Version  IE9  click here and you can change the browser version all the way back to 7   For 6 you will still need a virtual PC

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Adobe BrowserLab

[internet-explorer] Running Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on the same machine

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