Use IE8 Compatibility Mode for Testing Web Page Rendering of IE6?

Question

I am still running IE6 on my development PC because I use it to test the websites I'm developing.

I normally only test on IE6, assuming that IE6 is the lowest common denominator of IE family of browsers. If it renders well on IE6, it will be OK for IE7 and IE8. The other browser I use heavily for testing is Firefox 3.x. I assume these 2 family of browsers basically cover the bulk to the web surfers out there.

This is precisely the reason I have not upgraded to IE7. Now that IE8 can render web pages in Compatibility Mode, is it advisable to use IE8 for testing compatibility of websites with IE6?

I understand most people would advise using virtual machine. But it is kind of heavy just for viewing web pages.

Answer 1

Try out SuperPreview or the whole package (Expression Web announced at Mix) if you can..

SuperPreview is a new free standalone application from Microsoft (still in beta) which enables you to see how your websites will look across different versions of Internet Explorer making migration from IE6 to 7 and 8 much easier than before, without have to start up a Virtual Machine to run IE6, or have a separate computer dedicated to running IE6.

Answer 2

I second that, here a link, they showed it off at mix. It's beta, but it does multiple browsers for you at once.

Answer 3

IE7 will render differently than IE6, and IE8 even moreso, if your site has a doctype set, and therefore renders in standards mode.

I would suggest installing IE8, which will let you see your site in IE8 /~IE7~ and get IE6 on a virtual machine.

Answer 4

Fully agreeing with Scunliffe, in that testing in IE6 alone does NOT guarantee compatibility in IE7 and IE8. In fact, if you build a website that caters to all the quirks of IE6, it may well fail to render in all other (newer) browsers because it's dependant on those specific quirks.

So getting IE8 might be wise, since it has a compatibility mode built in that mimmicks IE7 almost entirely. Then get IE6 running on a virtual pc (which you can install and setup for free) or do some IE6 testing on another PC.

The best way to do browser compatibility in general is to start with completely standards-based, clean, semantic markup that works in for example Firefox 3 and Safari, uses XHTML and an XHTML DOCtype. And then to test in older, less capable browsers like IE6 and IE7 while trying to maintain the same code and trying not to introduce browser-specific hacks unless some browser-issue is tenacious and noticeable enough to warrant it. Which becomes more and more rare the longer you work in the field, since you'll know how to prevent buggy behavior, instead of having to solve it. Also, use conditional comments when you need to address specific versions of IE.