Saturday, October 6, 2012

How to run IE7 and IE8 on IE9

I once downgraded IE9 to IE8 for testing a web page whether it can work well on IE8. But if you set auto upgrade you will find IE return IE9 soon. And using IE8 on WIN7 gives you hell, too.
Can we run different versions IE on one browser? Yes, it is IE9. Finally I found it, because I firmly believe Microsoft is a big enough and powerful enough company and should provide this developer-friendly functionality which I even can think of. In fact, I once raised similar issue as early as IE7 was launched and wondered why IE7 didn't support such functionality to facilitate testing IE6 compatibility.
Below are the steps how to switch between several IE versions:
1. Press F12 to open developer tools or use menu

2. Change Browser Mode and Document Mode


What are Browser Mode and Document Mode? You can refer to here
And I also just heard this functionality was provided from IE8.... Is that because during this time I maintain a very old EJB2 project which only was tested on IE6.

So far I find IE9 can do all what Firefox do, and it might do even better. IE9, Firefox and Chrome, three pillars age?


2 comments:

  1. The question is whether the IE8 behaviour simulated from IE9 is really the same behaviour shown with real IE8. Not to mention that different IE8 version (whether it 32 bit or 64 bit or different minor version) sometimes have slight difference in behaviour.

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    Replies
    1. Like what? But this is really very good reminder.
      In fact this is my first time to test IE8 with IE9.

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