How do you test your website at all IE Browser?

Question

What method you use to test your websites in all the different Internet Explorer versions?
I know the program ieTester for Windows, but are there any other possibilities? How do you test? Can I install all Versions into one OS?
Thanks.

Comments

damn? all IE versions?

Code your page for version 9 and 10 and focus on Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari....

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Sometimes it's not possible. If you do this for your own projects, that't fine, but if you work for customers, sometimes they decide differently. I for instance have a large company as a customer, that uses internally IE7 as their standard browser. Naturally, their website must work in that browser too. That's (real) life and we have to cope with it.

Answer 1

IE9 has a developer toolbar. If you hit the "Fn+12" hotkey it'll bring it up and there are options to change browser testing mode between IE9, IE8, and IE7. I choose not to test in IE6 (unless it's quite a large project) specifically because Microsoft does not want to support it.

Here are the docs for the dev tools: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/gg589507(v=vs.85).aspx

Comments

On my (desktop) system it's just F12.

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This should not be the accepted answer as those modes are NOT an exact recreation of the actual stand-alone browsers. For example, the JS is just an emulation rather than using the exact engine which means that there are plenty of bugs missing from it. CSS doesn't match 1 to 1 either.

See all the other answers for better suggestions!

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While this works a lot of the time, I've found issues in JS and CSS at times on real IEs vs the IE9 running in IE7 mode. Virtual machines are the best solution, easy to setup and free. If you are being paid for the work, always run it through a true IE.

Answer 2

My preferred tool for that is BrowserStack, it lets you use different browser versions and operating systems:

http://www.browserstack.com/

Comments

+1 for BrowserStack, if you're not using it you're doing it wrong....lol

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I use multiple Virtual Machines using virtualbox.

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browserstack looks cool.

Here is a free browser testing tool if anyone wants to check:
http://spoon.net/Browsers/

Answer 3

You can't install all versions on one OS since Microsoft only allows one IE per Windows unless it is a Developer Preview.  The best solution is to make a virtual machine for each version of IE.  From there you can just open them and test.  

IETester is nice and pretty close in output, but there still are some minor oddities that won't show in there since there is nothing like running IE for real.  Most of the time though, IETester is just fine to get the job done.

Comments

You can download VHD files with all browser versions directly from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575

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This is the method that I currently use: set up a Virtual Machine for each version of IE that I want to test.

Answer 4

Your best bet is probably IETester. I personally haven't been testing in any version of IE except for the latest, as versions below 8 are really not being used anymore.

I also don't have Windows readily available too often, so I usually just run a batch with BrowserShots.org. It's a web service that takes screenshots of one of your web sites with different web browsers. Link is below.

http://browsershots.org/

Answer 5

I have a Windows 7 Virtual Machine which has IE9 installed and a Windows XP Virtual Machine that has IE8 installed, which I use to test in IE. I don't worry about IE6/7 anymore (thank Goodness); most of my audience will be using modern web browsers.

Answer 6

Expression Web Super Preview

Answer 7

I think adobe browser labs is good option.
https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html

Answer 8

Take this into consideration - don't test your sites for Ies under version 9. They are just not worth it. Do so only if client wish to spend huge bonus for that job.

Comments

Unless you want to work on sites for government, and then take it for granted that you'll need to support older versions of IE -- since this is likely what they'll be using in-house