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I have a Windows 7 machine on which I need to do testing on Internet Explorer 7 for a website I am working on.

I cannot use VirtualPC or any virtualized Windows XP. What are my alternatives?

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6 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

DebugBar IE Tester lets you run multiple IE renderers for testing. It comes with IE 8, 7, 6 & 5.5. Works with Windows 7.
[Edit] Previously mentioned Multiple IE doesn't wortk with Vista or Windows 7.

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Does Multiple IE work in windows 7? – hasen j Sep 1 '09 at 11:48
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Multiple IE doesn't seem to do it on Windows 7. – ymasood Sep 1 '09 at 11:48
I'll check Multiple IE in Win 7 tonight - IE Tester runs fine in Win 7. – pelms Sep 1 '09 at 12:09
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up vote 3 down vote

If you can't virtualize you're out of luck.

You can go to the tools menu - select Compatibility View Settings and add the site you're testing, that should knock IE8 back to IE7 mode.

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Yes, that's one way to do it. salmonmoose, would this also replicate all CSS related issues that are existing on IE7 but run fine on IE8? – ymasood Sep 1 '09 at 9:55
That's my understanding - this was they only way they could get IE to be standards compliant, without breaking thousands of websites that hack the html to work for old versions. The good news is people who updated to IE7 seem happy to move to IE8, the bad news is, those stuck on IE6 remain there. – salmonmoose Sep 1 '09 at 10:07
actually... I investigating a specific issue, which is not replicated on compat view. I think there is a specific earlier version of the IE7 engine which causes the bug (in a GWT site)... But I'm not sure :) – Pieter Breed Sep 1 '09 at 11:23
@Pieter Breed, you're right I also suspect this behavior. It doesn't act totally like IE7. – ymasood Sep 1 '09 at 11:44
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up vote 2 down vote

IE8 compatibility view

When a web site says that it supports modern web standards, Internet Explorer 8 respects that and displays the site using its most standards compliant mechanism. In the majority of cases, this works out just fine. However, every once in a while, a page that says “display me using modern standards” really means “display me like Internet Explorer 7 used to display modern standards pages”. This is where Compatibility View comes in.

alt text

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-1 x 20! Just look around, google a bit and you'll see this "IE8 compatibility view" is buggy, and doesn't do what it is supposed to do. Don't rely on this tool at all. Google around and you'll see by yourself. – Olivier Pons Aug 6 '11 at 6:59
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up vote 1 down vote

I don't think there are any. I tried to do this using a packaged install of IE7 (it comes with a couple of browsers) and runs well on XP. This actually corrupted my Windows 7 installation and I had to restore the system to it's previous image using System Restore.

It seems that the core file iexplore.exe was replaced when I tried this and it just crashed all my folder shortcuts once I had installed IE7. Not recommended.

I'll be happy to hear if there's still another solution out there to achieve this. Regards!

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up vote 1 down vote

I'd just upvote pelms, but I don't think Multiple IE will work in 7.

Aside from virtualization, I think IE Tester is your only option. There are some websites that say they will do some screenshots, but I've never used them. Have you looked over at stackoverflow.com? I suspect this question would be better answered over there.

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up vote 0 down vote

There is no supported method (that I can find) for natively IE7 on Windows 7

Here's what the "Get Internet Explorer 7" page looks like:

alt text

And the System Requirements says:

Windows Vista – Internet Explorer 7 is included as a feature within Windows Vista

...and...

Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

I think this is worth mentioning because some companies have a policy of wanting to support a browser+platform parings.

Practially speaking, developers and technical staff will need to shoehorn this combination for testing. IE7 is part of Vista, so people will need to use IE7 if for no other reason than to support the legacy Vista customer base they might have.

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