If you need to test in multiple browsers, you really need to run multiple operating systems (screenshot services are great, but they don’t give you the live interaction testing you really need). There are a number of great options for doing this. Since I work primarily on a Mac, I run Parallels. I have Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux running in Parallels. This makes it really easy to switch between different systems and browsers for testing.

Of course you can also check out VMware Fusion, Wine, or VirtualBox. If you know of other solutions, post those in the comments. Some of these companies also offer other software that allows you to run multiple operating systems on a PC system, instead of a Mac.

We’re starting a new mini-series here on Crunchy Melon called “Easier Browser Testing.” We’ll be posting some apps and services that we’ve found helpful when testing your sites on multiple web browsers.

Today, it’s multiple versions of Internet Explorer. How in the world do you test on IE 6 and 7, without buying a room full of computers? We like Multiple IE’s. It’s an installer program that will install IE 3, 4, 5, 5.5, and 6 all without disturbing IE 7. This way you can test in any of those browsers or all of them, all on the same computer.

One word of warning though, this app is no longer supported by the developer, so your mileage may vary. I recently installed this on a new copy of XP. After updating XP, I had to re-install Multiple IE’s, but once I did that, it worked just fine. The really nice feature is that IE’s conditional comments still work. If you don’t know what conditional comments are, you can read more here.

So far we haven’t found a way to run IE 6/7/8 all on the same machine, but we’ll have some more posts coming in this series that will provide some other methods for testing in IE8 (along with the rest of the popular browsers).