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View Your Web Pages in Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer Browsers

“How many times have you had to debug your web pages on virtual or multiple machines running different versions of Internet Explorer? Or had to wait for a slow web service to return renderings of your pages?

You don’t have to do that anymore. Now you can debug your pages on multiple versions of IE on the same machine that you use for Web development.”

From the MSDN Blog about Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview. Found while searching for the next best thing after Multiple IE, an earlier solution to let web designers and developers test their pages in multiple versions of the Internet Explorer web browsers. Multiple IE is no longer supported, and IE8 is out, so Microsoft’s Super Preview software looks like a decent alternative. (The only problem? Take a wild guess. The software is bloated, 250MB. Probably worth it since it is a Microsoft solution to a Microsoft problem. But you’ll need extra time to download their software.)

Other options appear to be IE Tester and Xenocode Browser Sandbox.

The most lightweight option probably is WestCiv’s X-Ray bookmark utility. It is hands down the slickest utility for web designers. Select the X-Ray bookmark then click any part of any web page and see all sorts of useful detail. I can’t get X-Ray to work with IE6, to show me all those nasty bug effects, but X-Ray does work on IE7, Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. So it’s a very lightweight easy solution to figuring out how your pages are being rendered across multiple browsers. And how somebody coded a neat web page design.

UPDATE (8/22/2009): If you install the Xenocode Browser Sandbox, and want to remove it, be aware that you may need to remove multiple instances of their software through the Windows Add/Remove Software screen. Also, in your Windows Task Manager (Ctl + Alt + Del), in the Processes tab, Xenocode software shows up as Spoon-Sandbox.exe. It’s a bit obscure. I had installed Xenocode for testing only to see, months later, that every day it loads spoon-sandbox.exe even though I don’t use the software. If you’re compulsive, like me, and want to know what is on your computer, now you know.

UPDATE (11/13/2009): Today there is no need to download software like Super Preview to view your application in different web browsers. Adobe’s BrowserLab currently is free and available anywhere with a modern browser. It’s easy to use and displays the full range of bad browsers, specifically, IE6 and IE7 on both Windows and Mac. But it also shows Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Browsercam also has updated their service to display your pages at a variety of screen resolutions. I have used Super Preview and while it is useful, it is harder to navigate than BrowserLab and the latter does not require a massive download and installation of software.

UPDATE (02/15/2010): Added a link to the release Microsoft Expression Web product. Unfortunately, the SuperPreview software is no longer free. You have to buy the whole software package. BrowserLab probably is the better option, as a result, unless you need to identify exactly what is wrong with how Internet Explorer displays your web page. In that event, SuperPreview provides excellent detail about the code and makes it relatively easy to find and fix problems.

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