Internet Explorer 7 Standalone Edition

If you have been using Internet Explorer 6 for a while and decided to download and install Internet Explorer 7 you may have noticed that you cannot launch Internet Explorer 6 afterwards anymore. This is extremely frustrating to webmasters who want to make sure that their websites are compatible to both Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Some help themselves by installing IE6 on a virtual machine or use a service like Browsershots to get a screenshot of how their website looks in a specific version of Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 7 Standalone (IE7 Standalone) comes in handy if you are still running Internet Explorer 6 on your system but want to install Internet Explorer 7 as well to be able to use both browsers on your system. It’s basically a script that downloads Internet Explorer 7 directly from Microsoft and installs it as a standalone application on your computer. This means that it does not mess with Internet Explorer 6 in any way and that it is possible to load either one of them.

This method does have some shortcomings though. Some features that require Registry keys that are still occupied by Internet Explorer 6 are broken and will not work in Internet Explorer 7 standalone. The developer is listing several features that seem to be broken although most do not explain the aspect that is not working.

This is a great way to run both Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on the same system. A quick test did not reveal any difficulties so far.