So why use it? Here are a few reasons (besides the obvious reason: testing websites in multiple Internet Explorer versions under Linux / Mac OSX):
- no Windows license required
- it's legal and free
- you don't have to install Windows in VirtualBox for yourself
- sometimes a website behaves differently in IE9's IE7 or IE8 compatibility mode compared to the actual Internet Explorer 7 or 8.
- a snapshot is automatically taken upon install so you can revert to the original machine state at any time
Disadvantages:
- the biggest disadvantage is the disk space required by these VHDs (as well as a large download size: 2,6 GB for IE7 and 4,1 GB for IE8 and IE9). If you want to run all 3 Internet Explorer versions supported (7, 8, 9), you'll need almost 45 GB of disk space. But you can install just one version: for Internet Explorer 7 you'll need 13 GB, for IE8: 8,4 GB and for IE9: 13 GB.
- the script cannot resume from failed downloads yet
Usage
sudo apt-get install curl unar
2. To download and run the script, use the following command in a terminal:
curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
curl -s https://raw.github.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="9" bash
Where "9" is the IE version you want (you can also add two versions here, like "7 9").
At this point, the download should start and it will take a while so be patient.
Now you can start testing your website in IE9, IE8 and IE7 under Linux or Mac OSX. Oh, and the password for all the VMs is "Password1".