How can I test with Internet Explorer while on my Mac?

Question

I work on a Mac, but most of my users are on Windows. What's an easy way to test my websites in IE 7, 8, & 9? Wine seems kinda buggy and unfriendly.

Answer 1

1. Download and Install the free Oracle Virtualbox Virtual Machine software

2. Utilize the scripts noted in the OS X Daily article Internet Explorer for Mac the Easy Way: Run IE 7, IE8, & IE9 Free in a Virtual Machine to download, convert and install Microsoft's free IE Testing VMs to be used on VirtualBox.

We’re going to walk you through how to install Internet Explorer 7, 8, or 9 in a virtual machine running Windows, directly in Mac OS X – for free. This is achieved by using the freely available VirtualBox software from Oracle, and combining that with free Internet Explorer testing virtual machines from Microsoft

Here is the scripts presented in the Article:

...

Install ALL versions of Internet Explorer: IE7, IE 8, and IE 9

curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash

Install Internet Explorer 7 Only

curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="7" bash

...

Answer 2

The age old question for web designers…

VirtualBox is awesome, but a pain to have multiple versions of Windows taking up space on your hard drive. Another option is using VirtualBox and only installing and running an app like ietester which is only available for Windows but allows you to render multiple versions of IE in one window.

Finally, my personal option of choice is a website called browserstack, You have to pay for it but it's really cheap and well worth it if this is how you make your living. I also own a Windows laptop just for doing thse kind of tests but more often than not use browserstack instead.

Answer 3

http://www.spoon.net is fantastic tool and the reason I prefer it is it installs just the browsers, and side-by-side with your other programs in task bar. It works like a charm, however it is commercial, $12 a month, $60 per year. They plan to publish the app. on Mac soon.

IETester is OK for some basic testing, but it doesn’t handle scripts correctly and therefore is not a 100% reliable testing solution.

Answer 4

Virtualization is definitely the way to go. There's VirtualBox as mentioned above, which is a free open source project. There are also two commercial offerings, Parallels and VMWare Fusion. Both of those have free trials so you can evaluate what might work best.

If you're wondering why to pay when VirtualBox is free, Parallels and Fusion are both commercially developed and supported software. If you run into problems, you can get help, rather than spend time searching for answers yourself. Additionally, VirtualBox is cross-platform, so it has fewer Mac niceties, and it's more of a DIY product - no quick setup or anything.

But you can make the call for yourself. TidBITS has a fairly recent article comparing Parallels and Fusion, with a good section on VirtualBox as well, and Ars Technica has a pretty comprehensive comparison of the latest versions of Parallels and Fusion.

Hope that's useful for you!

Answer 5

Just thought I would add to this as I just found a great new free tool to view IE on a mac. Download "Sauce" from the mac app store. I have been using Virtualbox the last two years and this is much easier to install, doesn't have huge VM files, and the interface is much smoother. Sauce also has the ability to preview in IE 10 (which is complete crap). There is also another cloud based app called browser stack. Tried the free version and the interface is nice but it does cost some $$.

Answer 6

In addition to virtualization there's Codeweaver's CrossOver

http://www.codeweavers.com