Browser testing in Internet Explorer can be a bit tricky since I do all my WordPress development work on a Mac- but I finally got a setup that works well.
I’m using Virtual Box because it is free, rather easy to set up, and I could store all the disk images on an external drive (they take up too much space on my MacBook Air, 10GB a piece).
The disk images with Windows and Internet Explorer can be downloaded from Modern IE. I had to download some of the rar files multiple times because the zips were corrupted in the download (they’re large files)- but I eventually got a clean version. Disk images are available for IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10 and IE11.
I also needed to download Virtual Box for OSX.
I use MAMP to run my local WordPress sites. In order to easily load those sites from the Windows Virtual Machine I needed to edit the host file.
That can be located on the Windows machine in:
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Command click on the host file, view the security settings, and give your user access if needed. Then edit that file in notepad and add this line at the bottom:
10.0.2.2 localhost
After that, you should be all set.
Looks interesting thanks, i assumed you already had a copy of Windows to install on Virtual Box, where can you get these from?
The disk images from Modern.ie include a copy of Windows. The license lasts for 90 days. After that, you’ll need to create a new VM, so keep a copy of the original files. Licensing is described in more detail here: http://blog.reybango.com/2013/02/04/making-internet-explorer-testing-easier-with-new-ie-vms/
The disk images are here: http://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads
Ah i see yes thank you.
Also seems too good to be true…
Hi Devin,
There’s a command line script that can automate this a bit too:
http://xdissent.github.io/ievms/
Great tip on how to edit the Windows host file as well!