Idea
Microsoft Internet Explorer has the biggest market share among web browsers. It is not popular among web developers, which complain about various bugs and incompatibilities. However, it is and remains being used frequently for various reasons:
- It is the browser that is shipped with Microsoft Windows. Many “regular” users do not see a reason to install another browser if the default browser works for them.
- Many enterprise intranet applications have been developed and tested for IE6. It would take significant time and money to rebuild those applications for other browsers. Therefore, in commercial environment, IE6 is still being used frequently. As most of the users cannot update software their PCs and laptops at work (do not have admin privileges), IE6 will be used in the coming years.
At the time of writing this article, IE6 and IE8 had both about 20% of the browser market. IE7 falls behind with 14%. Therefore, it is important to test with all those versions.
Virtual machines provide an easy way to test various versions of IE on the same PC. The rest of the article describes how to test on Windows XP. Although Microsoft released two newer versions of Windows, XP is used by 66% of users surfing the web (Operating system market share).
Setting up virtual PCs
Download Virtual PC 2007 from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/virtual-pc-2007.aspx. Furthermore, you need to download virtual hard drive images to test different versions of IE from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4.... Most reasonable option is to upgrade to IE8 on your PC and use XP images containing IE6 and IE7.
Install Virtual PC 2007 and setup virtual PCs using the virtual hard drive images you downloaded. The instructions can be found in article Step-by-step instructions on how to set up a Virtual PC and install IE6 (or IE7, IE8) (just substitute "Virtual PC 2004" by "Virtual PC 2007"). Your PC is now a host PC for the virtual PCs.
Networking
So your virtual PCs are setup now. However, you cannot connect to the Internet and to the web server on the host PC. The next step is to setup networking on the host PC and on the virtual PCs. This is described in a separate article Setting up networking for Virtual PCs on Windows.
Developer Tools
The IEs in the virtual PC images have two development tools preinstalled:
- IE Developer Toolbar has functionality comparable with Firebug. In View menu, select Explorer Bar. In the submenu that pops up, select IE Developer Toolbar.
- Fiddler 2 helps to inspect the network traffic. In Tools menu, select Fiddler.
Other Useful Tips
- If you have a web server on the host PC, make sure it can serve requests from other computers. For example, you need to click on the WAMP icon in the status bar and then click Put Online in the popup menu.
- You can install older versions of other browsers on the virtual PCs
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