Thursday, November 01, 2007

Install Multiple IEs in Parallel

Have you ever wanted to install multiple version of Internet Explorer in parallel for rapid Web development, testing, and debugging? If so, you will definately want to checkout Multiple IEs.

Multiple IEs is a free product from TredoSoft that installs old versions of Internet Explorer while retaining existing versions through IE7. Since the process involves several registry hacks and other tricks in order to get the Internet Explorers to play nice, I would advise a full system backup prior to installation.

I was able to successfully run the installer inside a Virtual PC image of Windows XP Professional SP2. This gave me the option to delete the Undo Disk incase something went wrong.

Multiple IEs installs the following versions of Internet Explorer:
  • Internet Explorer 6.0
  • Internet Explorer 5.5
  • Internet Explorer 5.01
  • Internet Explorer 4.01
  • Internet Explorer 3.0

The documentation says you can use this with the standalone version of Internet Explorer 7.0, but I recommend upgrading to Internet Explorer 7.0 prior to installation of Multiple IEs.