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I want to test the web pages I create in all the modern versions of Internet Explorer (6, 7 and 8 beta) but I work mainly on a Mac and often don't have direct access to a PC. Internet-explorer macos testing. Testing across all browsers can be especially tricky for developers using Macs, even more so when it comes to testing a website on Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). While it happens to be a market-leading browser, IE is not available as an installable application for Mac OS X.
Update: Microsoft now provide virtual machine images for various versions of IE that are ready to use on all of the major OS X virtualisation platforms (, and ). Download the appropriate image from: On an Intel based Mac you can run Windows within a virtual machine. You will need one virtual machine for each version of IE you want to test against. The instructions below include free and legal virtualisation software and Windows disk images. Download some virtual machine software. The developer disk images we're going to use are will work with either.
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VMWare has more features but costs $80, Virtual Box on the other hand is more basic but is free for most users (see for details). Download the IE developer disk images, which are free from Microsoft:. Extract the disk images using which is available from or as source code (Thanks to ).
Download Q.app from and put it in your /Applications folder (you will need it to convert the disk images into a format VMWare/Virtual Box can use) At this point, the process depends on which VM software you're using. There's three different methods that I recommend: Cloud-based interactive virtual machines Use something like. You'll be able to pick a browser of choice, enter a url and use a real OS with the real browser and test and interact as much as you need. Both of these also support setting up a tunnel to/from your own machine so any local hostnames will work fine. There is also, /, which seem to have similar services although I haven't used these myself. Local virtualization You can use (free and open-source, similar to VMWare or Parallels) to create one or more virtual machines on your computer. You may or may not know this, but you do not need to get an official copy of Microsoft Windows for these virtual machines.
Microsoft offers free VM images of simplified Windows installations for the purposes of testing Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge ( ). Check one of these articles to get that up and running:., 2011-06, xairon.net., 2011-09, osxdaily.com In the past, there were also native Mac applications (such as ), or as a Windows application which requires a VM if you don't have Windows (such as or ). The downside is that these emulations are often less stable than the real client, and are even harder to debug with because they don't run in the natural environment of the browser. Sometimes causing errors that don't occur in the real browser, and maybe not having bugs that the real browser would have. Cloud-based screenshots factory If you don't need interactivity and or need a cheaper solution (note that this method may not always be cheaper, do a little research before making assumptions) there are also services online that, like the previous one, have access to real browser/OS environments.
But contrary to the previous, don't grant interactive access to the actual machines but only to get screenshots. This has both an upside and a downside. The downside is that you can't interact with it. The upside however is that most of these allow easy summarizing of screenshots so you don't have to start session after another and get screenshots. Some I've used:.
(free and used to be my favorite, although the slowness made alternatives more attractive). (also free, requires an Adobe ID.
Not as much options and coverage as BrowserShots, but: no delay, instant screenshots, compare views and ability to let the screenshot be taken after a given number of seconds instead of right away (to test asynchronous stuff). (not free, but also has an interactive environment (see previous method) and a screenshot factory that is like your own private 'BrowserShots' site). I've used Codeweavers Crossover product for doing this from time to time.
It's a different option to virtualisation, and gives you a little more control than some of the hosted solutions. That said, it's based on WINE, and so you can potentially get all the problems and issues that come with doing it that way. That said, for basic testing without plugins, etc, it works great. I'm not 100% sure about support for IE8, you'd need to check that out, but it definitely gives you native support for 6 and 7. Browsershots is nice, but useless if you need to test functionality rather than just overall visual rendering. IEs4OSX and IEs4Linux have serious drawbacks. They have no real support for plugins and extensions like Flash and Silverlight.
Rendering isn't precise and they're highly unstable. For testing you really need an actual version of IE running on Windows, but you don't need to have a dedicated box.
IE images on VirtualBox is really the best, and easiest way to go. I have a if anyone's looking for a visual walk-through.