How can I enable Internet Explorer 7 with the Utilu IE Collection on Windows 7?

Question

I can't enable Internet Explorer 7 with the Utilu IE Collection. I have Windows 7 64-bit. What can I do?

Answer 1

I believe you will have to use a Virtual PC or any other Operating System simulation. This IE collection was my last hope too.

Developer mode of IE9 rendering IE7 is not the same as the real IE7! The same goes for IE8. You can only test it for simple positioning of elements (padding, margin, etc is rendered okay in the developer mode). But other things...

I will name you one simple example as proof, but I have encountered way more differences, which will fail in both IE7 and IE8 but will not show in IE9's version of those browsers:

The inline css: background-image: url(testimage.png);filter: alpha(opacity=50); will fail in any version < IE9.

Thus, you can certainly not rely on developer mode.

Answer 2

For testing old IE(7 and 8) Im using windows xp mode. Its free and legal from microsoft and you can make drive for changes and restore it back when you need. And beware changing IE 9 mode in dev tools like Yeti sayd.

Answer 3

Run something else.. since the Utilu website explicitly says IE7 won't run on windows 7 64 bit on their website. On the other hand, i do believe you can run the IE7 rendering engine on ie8, which does run natively on windows7 64 bit using compatability mode -> tools -> developer tools "browser mode" , without any additional software.