4th february 2006

ie6 and ie7, sitting in a tree...

i'll skip over the "internet explorer 7 beta has been released" announcement as, unless you've been locked in a cell (without internet access) for a couple of days, you already know that. however, being a developer, these types of announcements are a double edged sword. on the one hand, it's exciting to see what we can do with this new browser, but on the other hand, we can't really install it as we still need to test in ie6.

so i started looking around for a standalone version 7 straight away, and immediately found a way to localise the release; a method involving deleting most of the install files, and then creating a text file called 'iexplore.exe.local'. without a second thought, i gave it a go and was really happy when i was able to use ie7, and still open ie6. but, yes 'but', a strange thing happened. typing an address into ie6 caused the requested page to open in firefox (my default browser). as firefox was open when i tried this, i closed it down and typed another address into ie6. it opened up firefox and loaded the page. not happy, and my advice is stay away from this method.

but fear not, like a certain bank’s advertising slogan in the uk, 'there is another way'. rather than having the full ie6 version and running ie7 as a standalone app, it seems that it is possible to install ie7 over the top of ie6, and run ie6 as a standalone. just install ie7 in the normal way, then grab the internet explorer 6.0 eolas (xp).zip from skyzyx downloads, extract the files, and run iexplorer.exe. done and done.

related:

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web dev