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Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

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Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#81

Post by camtarn »

nnq wrote: post #69

Why use this instead of the setup that I use for years?: a WinXP virtual machine and this IEs collection: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-run-multiple-internet-explorer-v... - you end up with one VM and IE 3 - 8. ...and since I use Win7 for work I was tempted to try http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage but ended up using my old solution out of fear of messy installs/unistalls that such software could do on m…

In the past (about four years ago) we had a difficult to debug issue which only manifested in IE on one team member's computer - we traced it down to Multiple IE screwing up cookie handling in some odd manner. So you'd be testing with an environment that's not necessarily 100% the same as your end users.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#83

Post by jlebrech »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #79
axefrog wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compatibility mode isn't what he's talking about. In the developer tools, there's also "browser mode", which allows you to select a different user agent, and "document mode", which allows you to select a rendering engine from IE7 onwards.

I know about them. They aren't actually the browsers in question, though. It's IE9/10 engine with some stuff disabled.

the sad truth is; anything below ie7 should be dropped. Unless you are developing for a corporation that won't move away from ie6 and then you should only test on ie6.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#86

Post by wluu »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #79
axefrog wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compatibility mode isn't what he's talking about. In the developer tools, there's also "browser mode", which allows you to select a different user agent, and "document mode", which allows you to select a rendering engine from IE7 onwards.

I know about them. They aren't actually the browsers in question, though. It's IE9/10 engine with some stuff disabled.

This. We had a client complain that their password failed validation using IE7. Even simple passwords that should pass failed.

Turned out to be an IE7 specific regex bug (a look ahead bug), that we couldn't replicate using IE8 and IE9 set to IE7 compat mode.

Tracked down a copy of XP with IE7 and replicated the bug. Which led me to Google regex bugs related to IE7 and managed to track down the exact issue.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#87

Post by nnq »

camtarn wrote: post #81
nnq wrote: post #69

Why use this instead of the setup that I use for years?: a WinXP virtual machine and this IEs collection: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-run-multiple-internet-explorer-v... - you end up with one VM and IE 3 - 8. ...and since I use Win7 for work I was tempted to try http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage but ended up using my old solution out of fear of messy installs/unistalls that such software could do on m…

In the past (about four years ago) we had a difficult to debug issue which only manifested in IE on one team member's computer - we traced it down to Multiple IE screwing up cookie handling in some odd manner. So you'd be testing with an environment that's not necessarily 100% the same as your end users.

...nice to know such things can happen ...but I've never been bitten by it so far :)

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#88

Post by mattmanser »

lotyrin wrote: post #43
Hawkee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nice, but it suffers from the same flaw all the other virtual browser services suffer from: No pay by the minute/hour. I probably only need 1 or 2 hours with IE 8 every month or two.

Honestly, if it's not worth 20 bucks a month to you, you probably aren't in their target market (deliberately priced out of it, for good reason).

Depends, when you look at it another way $20 a month is almost your own virtual server with windows on it.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#89

Post by BonoboBoner »

crazygringo wrote: post #34

These have been around for years. I put together a guide for personal use a while ago, for how to get them running under VirtualBox on OSX. Should be a similar process under Linux. I don't have a blog or anything, so I'll include them here, hoping they'll be helpful to people here, sorry about the length (I last did this a few months ago, so it should be pretty up-to-date). - Extract the RAR files. On OSX use UnRarX:…

Awesome guide, thanks a lot!

Since the WinXP is just a single exe file, UnrarX cannot extract it. Any idea to fix this besides extracting it on a Windows computer?

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#90

Post by Sarkie »

BonoboBoner wrote: post #89
crazygringo wrote: post #34

These have been around for years. I put together a guide for personal use a while ago, for how to get them running under VirtualBox on OSX. Should be a similar process under Linux. I don't have a blog or anything, so I'll include them here, hoping they'll be helpful to people here, sorry about the length (I last did this a few months ago, so it should be pretty up-to-date). - Extract the RAR files. On OSX use UnRarX:…

Awesome guide, thanks a lot! Since the WinXP is just a single exe file, UnrarX cannot extract it. Any idea to fix this besides extracting it on a Windows computer?

p7Zip?
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