Yes, the ONE and ONLY way to properly test multiple versions of a single
browser is to have each tested version in a separate VM. Otherwise you
end up blending versions to some degree, most importantly for IE, which
relies on shared system-level libraries.
For instance, you'd have an IE6+FF2 VM, an IE7+FF3.0 one, an IE8+FF3.5
one, and IE9+FF4 (hence Vista/Seven) one, etc. You can also take Flash
availability into the picture (and also Java if you're so plagued), say
have Flash enabled on IE8/FF3.5, disabled on IE6/FF2, etc.
As for VM software, Win7 comes with VirtualPC, VirtualBox is free on all
platforms, OSX leading choices are VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop…
Regardless of these, you'll need licence keys for your Windows VMs,
even if the images for the OS are often provided by the VM tools.
As a final word of advice: start installing your stuff from the lowest
versions on, then clone your VM and upgrade the clone to the next
versions you need, and so on. I usually start from XP SP2 + IE6 + FF2,
then clone it and upgrade the clone to IE7 + FF3, then clone and upgrade
to IE8 + FF3.5. As for the IE9 version, just go with Win7, it's much
better and faster than Vista.
Oh, and my host box is a Mac, obviously, so as to be able to test Safari
properly (which, most of the time, serves as Chrome test, the
differences being so minute for my own purposes…), and also to test
general site rendering, OSX having completely different font treatment
from Windows.
'HTH
--
Christophe Porteneuve
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