How can I fully test my website on previous versions of IE with IE 11?

Question

With IE 10 testing my website on older versions of IE was very easy and always worked as it should, I just went to the developer tools, picked the version I wanted from the menu and I had no problems.

Now, after upgrading to IE 11 I encountered some problems with this method of testing. First, stuff I put inside HTML comments like <!--[if lt IE 10]> don't show anymore. Second, the same website that I tested a few days ago on older versions of IE with IE 10 looks very different when doing the same tests on IE 11.

So, why do all this stuff happen and how can I solve it?

Answer 1

Internet Explorer 11 shipped with a fairly good set of emulation tools. If you know what issues are being reported in Internet Explorer 10, you can attemp to replicate those in emulation. If you succeed, it's very likely that you can proceed to troubleshoot those issues while in emulation.

At times you may run into some things that aren't reproducible in emulation, and instead require a native instance of Internet Explorer 10 (or any other version for that matter). At this point you really only have a couple of options:

1. Virtual Machine in your browser (http://browserstack.com)
2. Virtual Machine on your desktop (http://modern.ie)

Each option has its own set of pros and cons. In-browser virtual machines can be spun up very quickly, and don't require a serious amount of system resources to run. That being said, the experience can be choppy and not conducive to troubleshooting issues that rely on low latency.

Desktop emulation is great because you have a more near-native feel. Unfortunately, this means you need to download very large files to get a second operating system running within your current operating system. Furthermore, you may find yourself wrestling with configurations and more.

I personally use a combination of the two, depending on what issue I am presently trying to troubleshoot. As a good practice though, writing clear and valid markup, along with using best practices like progressive-enhancement, and feature-detection to serve up alternate code-paths, results in a lower chance you'll have to spend much time debugging anything.

Answer 2

The latest ie11 have functionality of like previous ie browser version.

1 To access the modes, start the F12 Developer Tools,

2 click the Emulation icon at the bottom, and choose a Document Mode — they’re not named “browser modes” any longer

This article may help you. http://www.sitepoint.com/ie11-browser-modes-return/