MacdougalMedia by Scott Macdougal Weaver

IETester: Test Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 [Tools]

IE Tester

Today, my buddy Javier (owner of the Online Bill Manager) told me about IETester and I was shocked that A) I'd never heard of it before, and B) how simple it is to use.

If you've ever wanted to test one of your websites for cross-browser compatibility, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to either use a web service to do it for you or to ask a friend who actually has a crappy older version of IE to check your website for you. In either case, the waiting is the worst part and slows development down to a crawl.

Now although some people have chosen to boycott Internet Explorer (I know I'd be happier if it were gone), I still understand that a large percentage (if not the majority) still use it. Therefore, as web developers, we must test for it and patch our CSS and Javascript accordingly.

IETester makes this an absolute snap.

Although it is buggy, if all you want to do is see how a site looks in Internet Explorer 5.5, you simply open an IE 5.5 tab and go. You can view web pages in Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 all at once. All you have to do is tab between them. Pretty handy, huh?

After tabbing through a few of my websites, I've found a lot of glitches in previous versions of Internet Explorer that I would have otherwise never known about. Of course, my philosophy is that if you aren't at least on IE 7, then you need to get with it. IE 6 was nice and simple but it completely lacks standards support and even IE 7 falls short in the browser war.

In any case, for those of us that work in professional production environments where we are forced to design for versions as old as IE 6, this tool is amazing for just that purpose.

Oh yeah, and did I mention it's free?

Download IETester Here