Testing With IE6 and IE7

For those that need to test pages in both MSIE 6.0 and MSIE 7.0 (which, I expect, means somewhere above 90% of this community), I've found that Jon Galloway's IE7 Standalone works pretty nicely. The quick way to install it:

1. Create a directory for IE7 on your hard drive. Personally, I like c:\Program Files\IE7, but the specific path isn't crucial.
   
2. Get an IE7 installer from Microsoft. Download it into that directory. Do not install it.
   
3. Also download Galloway's IE7 Standalone installer into the same directory. On Galloway's Downloads page, scroll down to "IE7 Standalone" and click the "download" link.
   
4. Unpack the files in Galloway's Zip file, so that you have two .reg files, two .bat files, a text file, an Internet Shortcut, and Microsoft's executable all in the same directory.
   
5. Run "IE7 standalone Setup.bat" to set it up.

Presto, now you can run IE7 any time you want by running the "IE7.bat" script, or run IE6 the way you've been doing for the past *mumble* years. In fact, you can even run both of them simultaneously, as long as you understand what the IE7 startup script is doing and give it time to clear out its temporary Registry entries before trying to start version 6.

I hope this makes someone's life a little easier.