Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Multiple version testing of Internet Explorer

If you have looked at recent statistics for Internet Explorer usage globally, you probably already know that the usage of Internet Explorer varies widely.  Some users are still using Internet Explorer 6 while others are using anything from Internet Explorer 7 all the way through Internet Explorer 9.  In addition, Internet Explorer still largely dominates the market even with the widespread popularity of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Therefore, you will probably need to test your web site in multiple versions of Internet Explorer to ensure compatibility across all of the various browser versions.

Fortunately, Microsoft has released a set of VPCs (Virtual PCs) to allow testing all of these various versions.  You can download these VPCs here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11575

You will need Virtual PC 2004 or Virtual PC 2007 installed on your host operating system (depending on your host OS version) to be able to run these individual VPCs.

Unfortunately, the reality of the market is that not every user has upgraded to a more modern browser, but fortunately, with the use of these VPCs, testing against these various environments should be a bit easier.

No comments:

Post a Comment