IE Tester Tutorial: Learn To Use The Internet Explorer Tester Tool To Test The Website On Different Versions Of Internet Explorer
IE Tester is a software that is used to check whether a particular website/webpage is working perfectly on all versions of Internet Explorer.
Using IE Tester you can check your website on all versions of IE in one go. IE Tester is a free software by Core Services.
Table of Contents:
Why IE Tester?
Even though a lot of open-source browsers are available, many organizations support only Internet Explorer. Because a lot of admin permissions are required to download and install any software.
In such a case, the client’s requirement would be that their web application should work fine on all versions of Internet Explorer. Hence, under this situation, a tester has to perform User Interface Testing on all possible versions of the browser.
Also, if the client has specifically mentioned a browser that they are going to use then while performing browser interface testing, there is no need to check the website on other browsers. The testers can directly go ahead by testing the website on the required versions of Internet Explorer only. IE Tester is the best tool for this situation.
Internet Explorer itself provides an option to test the websites on its multiple versions. However, it doesn’t provide an option to test websites on Internet Explorer 6 and 7.
You can only test a website on Internet Explorer 8 and above. In order to do that just that open Internet Explorer => press F12 => Developer tools will open => Click on the down arrow => Select Emulation => Under ‘User-agent string’ you will get the different versions of Internet Explorer.
IE Tester provides you an option to test your website on Internet Explorer 6 and above.
Download And Installation Of IE Tester
Download IE Tester from IETester HomePage.
Click on the green button saying “Download IE Tester v0.5.4 (60MB)”. The download process will start immediately and you will see the following download progress bar at the bottom of the page.
Once this is completed, double-click the exe file and you will get a pop up showing the license agreement. Click on the “I agree” button and you will be able to see the following window.
Here I have unchecked all languages other than English. You can even keep all these languages checked. Click on the “Next” button and you will see the following window.
Click on the “Install” button.
The installation will get completed within seconds and you will see a shortcut on your desktop screen. Double click on it to open. The first look of IE Tester will be as shown below.
How To Use Internet Explorer Tester Tool?
As shown in the above image there are buttons for each IE version. You can check your website/webpage on any one version by clicking on that particular button or the last button that is of ‘All IE Versions’.
Using this button you can check your website/webpage on all the mentioned versions. When you click the ‘All IE Versions’ button you will see the following window as shown below.
With all these buttons, a button for IE version10 is disabled. It will be enabled only if IE version10 is the default version and it is on Windows 8 only i.e. this button will be enabled only if your OS is Windows 8.
As seen in the above image you can select and deselect any version as per your choice. Enter the URL in the given space and click ‘Ok’. Different tabs will open for each version and you can select your HTML files stored on your computer using the ‘Browse’ button.
Select version 10, enter URL, click ‘Ok’ and you will be able to check your website/webpage on IE version10. Thus even if the direct button is not enabled, you can use this way to check the website/webpage on version10. When you click ‘Ok’ by entering the URL, you will be able to see the following window.
As seen in the above image, a webpage is opened on IE version 10. Now, we will see all the buttons, menus and sub-menus of IE Tester one-by-one.
Close Tab Button: This button is next to the IE Tester logo with a black colored arrow as shown in the below image. It closes the active tab. The keyboard shortcut for this button is ‘Ctrl+W’.
Now let’s learn about the arrow that is next to the close tab button i.e. the brown-colored arrow shown in the above image. If you click this arrow, you will get four options. The first option is ‘Close’. If you select this option the ‘Close Tab Button’ will get closed or it will not be visible.
The next or second option is ‘More commands’. You will see the following window when you select this option.
Here there is a dropdown list called ‘Choose commands from’. Depending on the option selected in this dropdown list, the commands will change and then you can ‘Add’ or ‘Remove’ commands accordingly. Press ‘Ok’ to finalize the changes and press ‘Reset’ to undo changes.
There is one button called ‘Customize’, using which you can customize keyboard shortcuts for a particular command.
If you check the checkbox called ‘Show Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon’ then a toolbar will be shown as in the below image. The same option is available in the dropdown list of the arrow that is located right beside the ‘Close tab’ button, shown by a brown arrow in our earlier image.
If you want, you can again shift it to the upper side. When you shift this toolbar below the ribbon, then instead of the option ‘Show below ribbon’, you will see the option ‘Show above the ribbon’.
Home Tab: As shown in the below image, there are different navigation and debugging options available in this tab.
If you navigate to different pages, the ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ buttons will get enabled. Once you open the tab and type in the address bar, the ‘Refresh’ button will get enabled. The ‘Stop’ button gets enabled only when the IE Tester is opening a new page.
If multiple tabs (more than one) are open then only the ‘Close all except active tab’ button will get enabled. ‘Close all tabs’ button will be enabled even if only one tab is open.
‘Toggle Debug Bar’ and ‘Favourites’ button will be enabled while opening a tab. To use ‘Toggle Debug Bar’ options, you need to download the Debug Bar. The older version of it will not work with the latest version of IE Tester. The ‘Favourites’ button will not work as per the expectation.
Dev Tools Tab: This tab mainly gives the options that are helpful for the developers. You can view the source code of the webpage. You can increase or decrease the text size. It will be helpful for Usability and User Interface Testing. You can view the webpage by disabling images, java, java scripts, ActiveX, etc.
You can also test the webpage by disabling the videos and background sounds. You need to download the Debug bar to the Toggle Debug bar and view the source code. It will also be helpful for the developers.
View Tab: As shown in the below image the view tab has 2 buttons i.e. ‘Full Screen’ and ‘Hide Ribbon’. Using the ‘Full Screen’ button, you can see your webpage in Full-Screen mode and in this mode, you will see only one button i.e. ‘Close Full Screen’ to exit the full-screen mode.
If you click the ‘Hide Ribbon’ button you will get the same effect as the Full-screen mode. The only difference is that in full-screen mode, you will constantly see a button on the screen to exit this full-screen mode, and in the Hide Ribbon mode, you will not get any button. To exit this mode you have click on the IE Tester logo and select the option ‘Show Ribbon’.
Options Tab: In the Options tab you have printing options. Here you can check the IE Tester version and if a new version of IE Tester is available, then you can open the Internet properties using the button ‘Internet Explorer Options’.
Minimize the Ribbon tab: When this button is clicked, the toolbar that you are operating will get minimized. You will see the ‘Show the ribbon’ button to maximize it. The effect of using this button is different from the full-screen mode and hide ribbon mode. This just minimizes the toolbar and you will be able to view the headings.
How Does IE Tester Look?
The following image shows you how a webpage will look in IE Tester if the Internet Explorer’s version is supported. Here, we have used the URL www.firstcry.com with the default version of Internet Explorer (Microsoft Edge).
The below image will show you how the webpage will look in IE Tester if the Internet Explorer’s version is not supported by the website. For this, I have used the same URL with version 6 of Internet Explorer.
Errors Of Internet Explorer Tester Software
Here, with the version of IE Tester, we have tried only IE6, IE10 (IE10 not supposed to work as per IE Tester team) and Default IE are working. Other than google page while trying to open www.firstcry.com, the following error is seen.
While clicking the button for IE version 5, an error message saying “Unable to load the requested IE version” can be seen as in the below image. If it cannot be made available for use then it should be removed from the toolbar.
Conclusion
IE Tester is helpful for testers as well as developers and saves a lot of time. Downloading and using the older versions of the required Internet Explorer is a tedious job. Hence IE Tester helps a lot in testing.
For browser compatibility testing a lot of paid tools are available but it definitely affects the project budget. IE Tester is a free and easy to use tool that is very helpful for browser compatibility testing.
Are you ready to give it a try?