Try 3 months free BrowserStack from modern.IE

Modern web development means not only the need to test for cross browser compatibility, but the need to test browser compatibility across multiple devices and form factors. This means testing for varied sized screens on phones, tablets, phablets (phone/tablet), and even on the desktop. Ensuring your code works consistently across the more than 300 browsers (browser versions X operating systems & devices) available today is not a task to be undertaken manually. This means you need good webpage testing tools, or you are effectively cutting off segments of your customers for whom the pages won’t load correctly. Let’s start by examining the helpful set of tools at the Modern.ie website.

At modern.ie lies a website scanning tool in which you input a URL address and it reports common issues, mistakes, or optimizations that can occur on the myriad of platforms and browsers out there. If you want to run scans locally, you can download the scanner for offline or use in build processes or continuous integration. The scanner checks for several frequently occurring issues including the following:

The scanner also looks for Windows 8 specific features such as IE 11 Tiles and Notifications, Flip Ahead and Touch First browsing. While these features are platform specific, they are quite nice compliments to any website. Users can create a Live Tile of your website and receive content and updates automatically. This makes your website seamlessly integrated with the Windows and less need for a complete platform specific app in addition to the website, at least for this platform.After you plug the URL into the scanner, the results display showing how the page performs against the matrix of many criteria.

Virtual Machines

Test Versions Of IE from 6 through 11 using virtual machines that you downlord and manage in your own development enviroment.

Browser Screenshots

Get screenshots of how your site looks across nine common browser and devices.

Compatibitity Report

Analyze your site while it runs and get an automatic report of patterns of interaction known to cause issues in browser.

Site Scan

Scan For common coding problems to make sure users get the best possible exprience on your webpage.

IE testing

As a web developer, one of the first tasks you’ll need to do when you move to a new machine is work out a mechanism for testing in old versions of IE.

In the past, this may have involved some legally questionable installations of Windows XP to test in IE6, but thankfully those days are at an end with Microsoft’s modern.ie site. By heading over to the site’s virtualisation tools page, devs are able to download virtual machines that run IE6 through to IE10 across a combination of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

The best part of this site is that it is not limited to Windows only users; Mac and Linux users are able to grab VM images for their platforms, too.

The site has been out for a couple of months, but today it was updated to add IE10 on Windows 7 and IE8 on Windows XP.

An offer to grab Windows 8 and Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac on a USB stick for a charity donation sold out quickly, with Microsoft saying it will be looking at future offers for developers.

As with any VM usage, make sure that you have enough RAM in the host computer to handle the requirements of the client VM and can continue using the host without hanging or spluttering on both machines.

How modern.ie works