Like all those involved in web development know, making a website compatible with all browsers from older versions of IE to modern browsers, is tremendously difficult task. Even more difficult can be to test the development work on all versions of Internet Explorer installed on a physical PC.

There are many solutions to this problem. One of them is to use web applications to test your site on multiple platforms and install the software locally to ensure that the app is ready to use on multiple versions of Internet Explorer.

Virtualization comes as a rescue for such developers. For developers in need of virtual machines (VMs), Microsoft has provided a number of VMs that can be used to test websites in different versions of Internet Explorer running on various versions of Windows. Through modern.ie, the developer resource site for building for the modern web, Microsoft Internet Explorer Team is providing virtual machines with Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7, and Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 to download. The VM format supported is VirtualBox, Hyper-V, Parallels, VMWare Fusion, Virtual PC and VMWare Player.

“The VMs are available for free for the purpose of testing your site on all versions of Internet Explorer; regardless of your development platform. The images are available for Linux, Mac and Windows across the most common desktop virtualization technologies,” Sandeep Singhal, Group Program Manager, Internet Explorer, said in IE blog post.

The VMs are intended primarily to perform browser testing, which is useful for developing and testing applications and websites. The VMs provided is suitable to test something in a virtual environment without risk and if you want to try an application that is considered dangerous like viruses.

As a bonus, IE team updated VMs based on the feedback from users. The Windows Update is now turned off by default, so that VMs having older IE versions no longer automatically update to the latest. The expiration date of the images has been extended to 90 days, VM build version number is added and IE home page is set to visit modern.IE to check for VM updates and the FAQ answers are now more accessible.

Microsoft IE11 team aims to set a new standard for speed and performance and the company is now exploring developers community to keep pace with this innovation. Recently, Microsoft launched “The 11% for IE11 challenge”, to encourage developers to boost the performance of loading web pages at least 11 percent and in return get rewards including 11 copies of Parallels Desktop Virtualization, 11 pizzas for the team and 11 one-year subscriptions of BrowserStack testing.