IETester Editor's Review

Ask any website designer their biggest bugbear and they'll likely say it's the staggering number of people who still use outdated editions of Internet Explorer. Despite serious security implications, even some major organisations and government departments are still running editions as old as 2001's version 6. That's partly because it was the default browser in Windows XP, a system many people have stuck with to this day.

As much as the web community and even Microsoft itself would love everyone to be running the latest browser, the reality is that creating sites that don't work on older editions of Internet Explorer means losing out on a section of your potential audience. IETester is an incredible simple way to test for potential problems with your site on older editions.

The software is well designed: once you've opened a page you can choose what edition you want to check it against via drop down menu or a string of icons. There are online tools that carry out a similar service, though this solution is more convenient for pages that are in development and not yet online. The preview window is a fully working browser itself, so if you need to check some info online in the middle of testing, you don't need to open up a separate application.

Unfortunately there are a few bugs which mean certain website features such as Java or Flash don't always work properly, creating confusion about whether the problem lies with IETester itself or with the browser you are trying to simulate. In some cases you may need to make sure you are running Windows on a user account with administrator privileges to overcome such bugs.

Pro's: Simple to use handy tool

Con's: Some bugs; doesn't cover non-Microsoft browsers

Conclusions: Very useful once you've got your head round the effects of the bugs