The following websites, Firefox add-ons and applications could be helpful for those web developers who are intended to test IE in cross-browser capability:
- IE NetRenderer (Website, Firefox add-on)
This tools just simply show up a screenshot of your website from the submitted URL with selected IE version. This tool also available in Mozilla Firefox Add-ons, here is the link https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6455 - IE Tab (Firefox add-on)
This add-on can renders Microsoft Windows current IE engine on Mozilla Firefox's tab. By using this add-on, the necessary of opening the IE browser can be eliminated. - Browsershots (Website)
A free open-source online service which makes screenshots of your website in different web browsers, in different operating systems. It has several options that can be set before making the screenshot, such as choosing screen size, color depth, Javascript enabling, Java and Flash which these features could be a strong point from the other similar service.
The disadvantage of this service is it can't generate the screenshot on-the-fly. Because the screenshot is made by a number of distributed computers who are volunteered their computers automatically takes the screenshots from their web browser and upload them to the server. The whole process could take some times - MultipleIE (Application)
A very handy tool which could run almost all IE family from version 3 through 6. Unfortunately, MultipleIE doesn't support on Windows Vista. - Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (Application)
A light-weight virtualization suite for Microsoft Windows operating systems, and it's faster than VMWare as I experienced before. If you are a Windows Vista user, using Virtual PC with the Windows XP + MultipleIE (or pre-installed IE6) can overcome the limitation of your IE testing capability. Unfortunately, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 requires an OS with separated license key (even it works for pirated Windows, but it's illegal). - IETester (Application)
IETester is a free web browser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 2, IE7, IE6 and IE5.5 on Microsoft Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. This tool might not stable yet, since it's still an alpha release.
PS. The information above may out of date (in future), please visit their website for updated information.
