IE7 standalone runs alongside IE6
I have been using my laptop with IE7 installed to fix the mess in some of my websites, but it didn’t seem like a long-term solution.
I remembered a while back hearing about a way to install multiple versions of Internet Explorer at once, but I figured it would be too much to ask for this to be possible with version 7. But, it is possible!
Well, this is a Microsoft product, so – of course – it is far from flawless. I installed IE7 thru the standalone version installer from tredosoft.com(not windows update).
As soon as it installed , IE7 started right up. But, then I realized I couldn’t resize the window… ugh… and then I couldn’t close the program at all. After a little ctrl-alt-del action and upon further investigation, I found that if I went into “Manage Addons” (Tools > Manage Addons..) and disabled the 3 components of the very helpful IE developer toolbar, IE 7 acted normally.
Here is a list of some things that definitely will not work in IE7 – if you install it this way (from tredosoft.com):
- Context menus (the one you see when you right click on an empty space)
- The main menu bar.
- Disabling popup blocker.
- Feed reader.
- Installing ActiveX components and ActiveX support.
- Showing combo-boxes
- Web pages that require authentication.
- Adding search providers via websites
- and my addition: IE Developer Toolbar
This is a great solution for web developers that still need to be able to see what their CSS will do in both IE6 and IE7. (I have already run into overlapping float problems with DIVS in IE7 – with a site that looked perfect in every other browser..)
For those of you foolish enough to have already auto-installed IE7, check out this article about the possibility of standalone versions of IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6
One final unrelated note – the thing that annoyed me the most about IE7 was its lack of a standard menu by default. I can’t stand hunting around their little icons to try to find what I need. Luckily, if you right-click in the area around the tabs, you can check “Menu Bar” to turn it on.