Virtual PC Image–Application Compatibility for Windows IE
Besides checking their websites and designs in browsers from all kinds of browser developers, web designers often need to check it in different versions of a browser too. For example, Mozilla’s Firefox has a distribution rate that is still divided among the versions 2, 3 and 3.5 of Firefox making it necessary to test the website in all three of these versions.
Fortunately, there are various third apps and softwares to help us test a website in different versions of IE, such as IETester, which makes it possible to install multiple versions of IE on the same computer operating system. Expect of IETester, Browsershots, are another online tools available that can test a website in various browsers.
Nowadays, a third possibility is now offered by Microsoft directly in the form of virtual PC images. IE 6, 7 and IE 8 are provided as virtual PC images. The images should come in handy for anyone running Windows Vista who wants to see how their web page look in Internet Explorer under Windows XP.
The Windows XP images have a size of around 600 Megabytes each while the Windows Vista images triple that size. The only limitation is an expiration date for the virtual PC images. The Windows XP images will expire in January 2010 while the Vista images will expire 120 days after their first execution. These expiration dates make the virtual PC images a less than favorable solution but its probably better than not testing the various editions of Internet Explorer at all.
If you are a web designer or webmaster who is looking for a convenient way to check websites compatibility,you may get interested in the virtual PC images. If do, you can download them directly from the Microsoft official website.
October 1st, 2009 at 8:14 am
Hi there,
Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.
Eremeeff
October 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Where are you from? Is it a secret?
October 4th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Thanks for the awesome post, it helped me out a lot.
October 6th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Thank you.