How to professionally test on old Internet Explorer versions

If you have (or want) to test your websites and applications on older versions of Internet Explorer, then there’s a perfect way to do so. A really perfect way. Surprisingly this excellent collection of official virtual machines – containing real Windows systems with real Internet Explorers inside – is quite unknown among lots of developers.

This is not just about “looking good”, it might be very useful to also test your applications’s JavaScript in those IEs, there’s a lot of stuff that can break.

On modern.ie Microsoft offers ready-to-go (one-click!) virtual machines for all operating systems (Mac, Windows and Linux) and nearly every virtualization software (Windows: Hyper-V, VirtualPC, VirtualBox, VMWare, Mac: VirtualBox, VMWare, Parallels, Linux: VirtualBox).

The boxes are real Windows version (that run for 90 days), 100% legal, 100% official, 100% rendering how real users see your page. No more messing around with Internet Explorer 10’s engine switch (which has been removed in version 11 btw, but can be hacked back).

Currently these ones are offered:

• IE6 on XP
• IE8 on XP
• IE7 on Vista
• IE8 on Windows 7
• IE9 on Windows 7
• IE10 on Windows 7
• IE11 on Windows 7
• IE10 on Windows 8
• IE11 on Windows 8.1

Ready-to-go, no need to install. Start them with a double-Click, no config. Microsoft also links to this excellent blog post giving deeper instructions on how to handle this stuff. Worth a bookmark.