Like most Web designers, I need to test my Web designs on as many versions of as many browsers as I can, so that they display correctly for all my customers. Internet Explorer makes that very difficult because IE is built into the Windows OS - and so even if you use a hack, it doesn't display the same as on a stand-alone system.
But it is possible to use a Virtual PC to run IE 6 on the same machine that you have IE 7 on natively.
While it's not easy to install (there are 19 steps) and there are some gotchas (the hard drive image Microsoft provides expires on April 1, 2007), this is still a less expensive way to test your creations on IE 6 while taking advantage of all the changes in IE 7.
- First download Virtual PC 2004 SP1
- Then download the IE 6 VPC Image
- You need to have the Genuine Advantage Plugin
- Internet Explorer installs an ActiveX Plugin to get Genuine Advantage
- After all that, you can download the image
- It's a HUGE File, so go get some coffee
- I got a security warning
- Be sure to read the Readme file on the Image
- Start Windows Virtual PC - and run the wizard
- Choose "Create a virtual machine"
- Give it a name and location
- This is a Windows XP Install
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