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With IE 10 testing my website on older versions of IE was very easy and always worked as it should, I just went to the developer tools, picked the version I wanted from the menu and I had no problems.

Now, after upgrading to IE 11 I encountered some problems with this method of testing. First, stuff I put inside HTML comments like <!--[if lt IE 10]> don't show anymore. Second, the same website that I tested a few days ago on older versions of IE with IE 10 looks very different when doing the same tests on IE 11.

So, why do all this stuff happen and how can I solve it?

Cokegod
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    even using IE 10's developer tools to replicate other versions is not very reliable. There is no better substitute than the real thing...or virtual machines. – Novocaine Nov 14 '13 at 17:14
  • [IETester](http://my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage) is reasonable, but it can still have inconsistencies. Consider using a paid service for cross-browser testing. – zzzzBov Nov 14 '13 at 17:15
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    Conditional comments are no longer supported, thats why the content inside of them does not show anymore – T3 H40 Nov 14 '13 at 17:15
  • The dropdown in the browser tools is not the real thing. IETester isn't either. There are VMs for older versions at Modern.IE http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads – Dave Methvin Nov 15 '13 at 17:42

3 Answers3

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Internet Explorer 11 shipped with a fairly good set of emulation tools. If you know what issues are being reported in Internet Explorer 10, you can attemp to replicate those in emulation. If you succeed, it's very likely that you can proceed to troubleshoot those issues while in emulation.

enter image description here

At times you may run into some things that aren't reproducible in emulation, and instead require a native instance of Internet Explorer 10 (or any other version for that matter). At this point you really only have a couple of options:

  1. Virtual Machine in your browser (http://browserstack.com)
  2. Virtual Machine on your desktop (http://modern.ie)

Each option has its own set of pros and cons. In-browser virtual machines can be spun up very quickly, and don't require a serious amount of system resources to run. That being said, the experience can be choppy and not conducive to troubleshooting issues that rely on low latency.

Desktop emulation is great because you have a more near-native feel. Unfortunately, this means you need to download very large files to get a second operating system running within your current operating system. Furthermore, you may find yourself wrestling with configurations and more.

I personally use a combination of the two, depending on what issue I am presently trying to troubleshoot. As a good practice though, writing clear and valid markup, along with using best practices like progressive-enhancement, and feature-detection to serve up alternate code-paths, results in a lower chance you'll have to spend much time debugging anything.

Sampson
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    difference between document mode and user agent string? – Don Cheadle Dec 08 '15 at 15:39
  • Changing the *document mode* modifies the interpretation and presentation of the document by the browser itself. Changing the *user agent string* modifies the identity of the browser itself to the server, and client-side scripting. – Sampson Dec 08 '15 at 18:54
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The latest ie11 have functionality of like previous ie browser version.

1 To access the modes, start the F12 Developer Tools,

2 click the Emulation icon at the bottom, and choose a Document Mode — they’re not named “browser modes” any longer

This article may help you. http://www.sitepoint.com/ie11-browser-modes-return/

Tushar Patel
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I had users complaining about issues in IE10, and was not able to recreate them in IE11 using F12 emulation. What I ended up doing (after many attempts to uninstall IE11, and install IE10 to no avail (in Windows 10)) was this:

Download VirtualBox here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Go to: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/

Download the VM you want to test with and then load it into VirtualBox. There are instructions on their website on setting options etc. Mostly you need to set memory, and virtual hard disk location and size. I used 1024MB and the default for the drive, since I am only running IE with this VM. It worked great. Networking by default put the host at 10.0.2.2 so my localhost test website running on localhost:8080 was at http://10.0.2.2:8080// on the VM. It worked well.

Hope this may save someone some time.

The emulation missed two different bugs one with Array.filter, and another with __definegetter__.

The VM picked these up. It is a slower approach than emulation.

Just saw the "On IE11." Sorry about that - still this is my recommendation. And you don't have to uninstall IE11.

Robb Sadler
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