Internet Explorer 6 emulator recommendation

Testing Problem Overview

What good tool can be recommended for emulating Internet Explorer 6? I would rather not have to go and install an old copy of Windows XP somewhere.

Testing Solutions

Solution 1 - Testing

Microsoft offer a number of Virtual PC images with various versions of IE for download.

They now also offer VMs to run VirtualBox, VMware and Parallels on Windows, OSX and Linux.

Solution 2 - Testing

http://spoon.net/browsers/ Spoon lets you create web-hosted versions of your existing Windows apps that run instantly from your web site, with no install. Spoon has a gallery of browsers that you may launch including:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 6 Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 Apple Safari 4 and Safari 3 Google Chrome, Opera 10, Opera 9

Solution 3 - Testing

Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview (which is now part of Microsoft Expression Web 3) has the capability to show you how a page would render in Internet Explorer 6, it also has some nice features to overlay an Internet Explorer 7 render or an image so you can see where those 1 pixel discrepancies are occuring.

Solution 4 - Testing

If you are running a Windows OS, you can install MultipleIE. It will allow you to run IE6 as a standalone.

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

Not sure what your OS is though.

Solution 5 - Testing

Litmus lets you test your site in dozens of different browsers.

Solution 6 - Testing

I found recently that you can do this quite nicely in Windows 7, using the Windows XP mode. You need two virtual hard drives set up, but you can then create shortcuts on your Windows 7 desktop to 'open' Internet Explorer 6. There's a good walkthrough of how to do this here:

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/ie6-ie7-ie8-win7-xp-mode/1

Solution 7 - Testing

netrenderer is a

free,
very quick (no wait times at all),
platform independent, and
versatile (IE5.5--IE10)

solution that does not require any local installations. My definite choice after trying out more than a handful of alternatives.

Solution 8 - Testing

https://browserlab.adobe.com/ gives you an image of your site in various browsers. Not a real world experience but handy nonetheless.

Edit: On March 13, 2013 BrowserLab was shut down.

Solution 9 - Testing

On Windows 7 you can download XP Mode, which gets you a fully-licensed version of XP. It integrates nicely with windows 7, and it never expires like the free VPC images.

Solution 10 - Testing

People generally use VMWare, or another virtualisation tool, to do this. At least where I work :)

Solution 11 - Testing

If you have a Linux box I think that IE4Linux is IE6.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Paddy	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Testing	Dave Webb	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Testing	Felix H. Cat	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Testing	benophobia	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Testing	jgallant	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Testing	MJeffryes	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Testing	Paddy	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Testing	Daniel Andersson	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Testing	deadlyhifi	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Testing	Gabe Moothart	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Testing	Noon Silk	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - Testing	Jamie Kitson	View Answer on Stackoverflow