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11 CommentsHi! I'm Luc. I'm new here at 9rules. I hope I can get some advice to this problem. I recently bought a vostro laptop which comes with Vista Home Basic OS. I'm using this for web design so I need to be able to test with IE6. I've done some searching and it says that it's not possible to install a standalone IE6. Is there any development for this? I like the interface of vista and I'm also kinda getting used to it. But if it wouldn't let me test with ie6 I'd probably go back to XP. But before I do that, I'm wondering if there are any 3rd party application to make IE6 testing possible.
xirclebox
Written Dec. 30, 2007 / Report /
I think you are stuck. you can only "uninstall" 7 only if 6 was previously on the machine. You may want to consider jumping back to xp.
Oli
Written Dec. 30, 2007 / Report /
Ironically, I've got better access to Windows browser from here in Linux than you have in Vista.
If you're patient (and good enough not to keep testing over and over again), you could try BrowserShots which is a free, cross-platform screen-shooting service. As it's free you have to queue up. If you're inpatient, you could try their priority service (practically no waiting) for $15/month.
You could install XP as a virtual machine through Virtual PC. It will hog a not insignificant amount of resources and on an under-powered computer, especially where memory is tight, you'll notice the effects of running a VM.
BrowserShots has the benefit of being able to show you your site over a massive range of browsers and versions, acts as a handy place to show clients what you're doing and also (and probably most importantly for a laptop), isn't going to hog an XP install's worth of memory and CPU cycles... but if you only want IE6 and you don't want to wait/pay, using a VM looks to be your only option.
davidhayes
Written Dec. 30, 2007 / Report /
Have you tried using evolt.org's standalone version of IE6?
I'm using it on XP, and I don't know why it wouldn't work on Vista. I admit to being rather ignorant of the intricacies of IE/Windows working, but I would at least recommending giving it a try.
Oli
Written Dec. 30, 2007 / Report /
According to this evolt thread, it doesn't play happy with Vista.
octwelve
Written Dec. 30, 2007 / Report /
Thanks for your input guys. Looks like I'm really stuck. Why does IE makes it sooo hard for me!
alivemedia
Written Jan. 1, 2008 / Report /
Get Virtual PC 2007 and the Xp IE6 Image and you can test IE6 on Vista.
Virtual PC 2007:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
XPSP IE6 Image:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
It works great, Virtual PC is a pretty damn cool piece of software,
posure
Written Jan. 2, 2008 / Report /
I use Microsoft's Virtual PC images like alivemedia does. They can be a bit inconvenient because you gotta wait for the virtualized OS to start up, but its the closest you're going to get to a true environment. The standalone IE hacks tend to be buggy and I usually only use them for quick checks.
Nils
Written Jan. 2, 2008 / Report /
I'm not going ahead with the big boys here, but have you tried this by Tredosoft? They're the same guys from MultipleIEs, although that one doesn't run natively on Vista.
octwelve
Written Jan. 3, 2008 / Report /
Thanks for the link guys. However, according to Microsoft
publicenergy
Written Jan. 3, 2008 / Report /
The VMWare products all work on the home editions of Vista
posure
Written Jan. 3, 2008 / Report /
If the VMWare products work with Vista Home, you could use their free VMWare Converter and VMWare Player to convert Microsoft's Virtual PC image to the VMWare format and use VMWare Player to run it (I know this works because I happened to do the same thing yesterday, VMWare Player supports USB while Virtual PC 2007 doesn't).