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IE11 Virtual Machines Now Available on modern.IE

With the recent release of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7, we have added IE11 for Windows 7 and IE11 on Windows 8.1 to the suite of virtual machines available on modern.IE for testing Internet Explorer across platforms and versions. We have also updated all of the virtual machines based on your feedback, to make browser testing easier. The VMs are available for free for the purpose of testing your site on all versions of Internet Explorer; regardless of your development platform. The images are available for Linux, Mac and Windows across the most common desktop virtualization technologies.

Among the changes we made to the refreshed VMs are:

  • Windows update is set to off by default to prevent VMs with older versions of IE from automatically updating themselves to newer IE versions
  • Extended the expiration time of the images
  • Answers to frequently asked questions are now readily accessible from the Windows desktop
  • Added a VM build version number and set the IE home page to visit modern.IE to check for VM updates

VMs for testing on IE are just one of many free tools we offer on modern.IE. Check out these additional tools designed to help reduce your testing time:

  • A static code site-scanner to check for common compatibility problems
  • Add our compatibility inspector JavaScript library on your site without touching a line of code thanks to Sauce Labs automation
  • See how your site renders across popular devices and browsers with BrowserStack screenshots
  • See techniques and code we developed behind the scenes for some amazing HTML5 Web sites through tech teardowns

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on ways we can improve modern.IE - and help developers spend less time testing and more time building innovative Web experiences. You can reach out to us either on this blog, on Twitter ( @IEDevChat), or via Connect.

Sandeep Singhal
Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2013
    Do the VMs work on the HyperV version that comes with Windows 8.1?  My dev team all runs 8.1, and we've had trouble getting HyperV to recognize the VMs (we've been trying the Windows 7 / IE9 vm in particular).

  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2013
    This is fantastic. Thank you!

  • Anonymous
    December 19, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 23, 2013
    @James S: Yes, they do work with Hyper-V on Windows 8.1.  One thing to note, when using Hyper-V, it’s best to create a new VM then attach the virtual hard drive from the downloaded VM file, rather than trying to import the downloaded VM as an "existing" VM.

  • Anonymous
    December 25, 2013
    Thanks for the info Sandeep.  We've had much better luck with this latest batch of VMs than we did before. It might be worth it at some point to put a bit more detailed instructions on the website.  For developers who don't usually deal with Hyper-V on a daily basis, it's not always clear what the best practices and procedures are.