Best way to test a webdesign for IE on a Mac? [closed]

Question

I'm currently designing a website on a Mac. The design works fine in Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Now I'm about to test it with different versions of Internet Explorer. The problem is that I don't have access to a Windows machine at the moment. What's the best way to test a webdesign for IE on a Mac?

Answer 1

I use BrowserStack.com, which is pretty cool. But the debugging tool (Firebug) gets really slow on IE7 and IE8.

So here it is a way to have IE7, 8 and 9 working in your mac:

1) Download & Install VirtualBox

2) Launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/)

3) Decide which versions of Internet Explorer you want to download and install – each version of Internet Explorer is contained within a separate virtual machine that runs within VirtualBox. In other words, if you want to run Internet Explorer 7, 8, and 9, you will need to download three separate VM’s, which may take a while so keep that in mind. Select the text below and copy it:

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

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

3.2)Install Internet Explorer 7 Only

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

3.3) Install Internet Explorer 8 Only

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="8" bash

3.4)Install Internet Explorer 9 Only

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="9" bash

Copy and paste the selected command from above into the Terminal and hit return, this will start the download and conversion process. How long this takes depends on your internet connection and how many versions of Internet Explorer you chose to install Launch VirtualBox and boot Windows & Internet Explorer – select the virtual machine corresponding to the version of Internet Explorer you intend to use: IE7, IE8, IE9, then click on the “Start” button to boot that Windows machine with that version of Internet Explorer. Remember that the default Windows admin password is “Password1″, it’s also the password hint within the VM should you forget it.

That’s really all there is to it. These commands are part of the ievsms script from xdissent and it manages the entire download, conversion, and installation procedure, it doesn’t get much easier.

VM Snapshots Circumvent Microsofts 30 Day Limitation The other great thing about this method is that it circumvents Microsofts 30 day limitation by utilizing snapshots, a feature built into VirtualBox. This preserves the original Windows VM state and allows you to continuously use the IE virtual machine without any time limitation simply by reverting to the original snapshot once the 30 day lock occurs.

To use a snapshot after the 30 day Windows expiration, just open VirtualBox, select the IE VM, and click on the “Snapshots” button. From here you can boot from the original snapshot that was created and use IE again for another 30 days. You can do this indefinitely, effectively having a clean IE test environment forever.

Source:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/04/internet-explorer-for-mac-ie7-ie8-ie-9-free/