Testing IE6 on a Mac

As of August 2008, Internet Explorer 6 usage still accounts for 30% of the global Web population depending on who you ask. And as all the Web designers in the audience are aware of, making Web sites look good in IE6 can be a bit of a challenge.

If you work on a Mac, then a virtualization solution like Parallels (currently what we’re using) or VMWare Fusion (also highly recommended by colleagues) is your best bet for running Windows.

The next challenge is being able to run IE6 side by side with IE7 (or the newer IE8 beta). We’ve explored various tools over the last couple weeks but the one we settled on finally is TredoSoft’s IE Installer. Note, however, this installer is optimized for Windows XP, which represents our operating system of choice due to lower memory requirements than Vista (it also has a 74% market share as of August 2008). If you are looking for a solution for running IE6 under Vista, check out this article.

TredoSoft installs a fully functional version of IE6. There are some limitations, e.g. not being able to use the IE Developer Toolbar. And others have encountered some issues (read the comments on the bottom of the TredoSoft IE6 page). However, we’ve found this solution to be more stable than some of the others we’ve evaluated.