What is an efficient way to set up different VM's to do cross browser testing

Question

I have checked out several links, and also this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2565505/whats-the-best-way-to-do-cross-browser-testing

I came to the conclusion that the best way to do a 100% accurate cross browser test is to do virtualisation. I am creating a website with a responsive layout, so it would be good if I could re-size the browsers, so browser screenshots are not an option.

Now I want to know if there is an easy way to set this up. Are there already ready to download vm's available that work out of the box, or should everything be installed separately.

And if everything needs to be installed separately, how do I get the keys for all the windows installations?

Answer 1

Microsoft provides IE App Compat VPC Images for free for exactly this purpose. They have images for XP, Vista, and 7 with IE 6, 7, and 8 respectively. Installers for later browsers are bundled into the image to save you from hunting for the download. You can simply snapshot or clone the images to install the other browsers if you need to.

Note that the images do expire periodically, but MS has also refreshed the images with the latest available security patches and new expiration dates.

Depending on what you need, this may be enough. Otherwise you should look into a TechNet or MSDN subscription.

In order to help web designers and web developers test their websites in older versions of Internet Explorer, we've provided the following VHD with Windows set up with the specified version of Internet Explorer. The images are patched with the latest security updates and are otherwise clean installs of the operating system with very few modifications.

This download page contains different VPC images, depending on what you want to test. These images are specifically designed to run on Microsoft Virtual PC, and may or may not work in other hosting environments.

Answer 2

An MSDN subscription is designed exactly for what you want. You get lots of keys for all the Microsoft operating systems, and you can setup a number of virtual machines, all with different browser levels. There is an annual cost for this though, but it's rather reasonable for all the licenses that you receive.