MSIE browser testing

Testing web applications with various versions of MSIE (Internet Explorer) often proves problematic as it’s generally not possible to have more than one version installed on a single Windows installation. There are various approaches, such as:

  • Having an entire test lab with different browser configurations.
  • More often, it’s also possible to run a set of virtual machines on a single desktop.
  • Another option is to find a package that ‘hacks’ around some of the Windows limitations and installs (at least partially) the browser rendering capabilities.

NOTE: the final method above has some quirks, but you can generally use it for preliminary testing by developers as it’s obviously easier to maintain.

Here are a few common packages that I’m aware of:

Happy testing!

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