IE VM&#39;s the easy way... Three host OS&#39;s (Yes, even OSX and Linux), four VM types (yes even VMWare), five IE versions (yes even IE10) and one download (no more split rar&#39;s)!

Monday, February 04, 2013

IE VM's the easy way... Three host OS's (Yes, even OSX and Linux), four VM types (yes even VMWare), five IE versions (yes even IE10) and one download (no more split rar's)!

Rey Bango - Making Internet Explorer Testing Easier with new IE VMs

The New Way to get IE VMs

Up until now, if you wanted to test different versions of IE natively you had to download VPC images that would allow you to run virtual machines for the different versions of IE. It wasn’t a great solution because:

They were designed to be run in Microsoft’s Virtual PC software making it hard for non-Windows developers to use them.

They were broken apart into multiple, large download files

There were ways to use them on other OSes but it required some work or unofficial scripts to convert them. Either way, the IE VPCs weren’t very easy or convenient to use.

We wanted to make this easier so as part of the modern.IE project, we created a new set of VMs that targeted your OS and your VM-specific software. Now, you’ll be able to choose your OS:

then choose the VM software:

and download the VM with the version(s) of IE you’d like to install:

The great thing about this process is that:

You only have to download a single file per VM

You can use the VM software of your choice

Currently, we’re offering VMs that will run on:

Windows

OSX

Linux

The VM software choices are specific to the OS you choose:

Windows – Hyper-V, Virtual PC, VirtualBox & VMWare Player

OSX- VirtualBox & VMWare Fusion

Linux – VirtualBox

The IE versions being offered are:

IE7 on Vista

IE8 on Windows 7

IE9 on Windows 7

IE10 on Windows 8

We initially launched with an IE6 image but discovered an issue and had to pull it down. We’ll be putting it back up shortly. We’ll also be supporting Parallels as well and that will be available soon.

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ZOMG, if you've ever downloaded the old IE VM's you'll know just how awesome this this. And they've taken to an even higher level with the host OS/VM system support. Who'd have thought?