How to use IE6 IE7 IE8 and IE9 (and other Windows apps) on OSX Lion using VirtualBox for free (legally!)
I found myself needing to test multiple IE versions in OSX and couldn’t find a step-by-step guide that “just works” and perfectly replicates the real browser behavior. I wrote these notes just to remind myself how I did it, and figured it could help someone else online.
Note: For a more automated way of accomplishing this, check out ievms. I haven’t personally used it, but it looks like it automatically does most of the steps below.
Microsoft makes free VM images available for testing IE. They expire after a few months so you’ll have to periodically repeat this process, but it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it. There are plenty of other guides on how to use these, but I never found an up-to-date guide for using them in VirtualBox on OSX. (This guide was made using the “Publish Date: 8/16/2011″ VMs and VirtualBox 4.1.2)