Yay! Internet Explorer 3!

You experts probably beat me to the punch on this — after all, the original technique for this was first conjured up three whole years ago — but it wasn’t until today that I found out about Multiple-IE. This handy package lets you install any previous version of Internet Explorer — all the way back to 3.0 — on your Windows XP system, simultaneously.

As a web developer, this is particularly exciting for me. Since the release of IE7, I’ve been running into this problem where I need to test a web app against both IE6 and IE7, but I have no easy way to do that since Microsoft only lets you keep one version of IE on your machine at a time. Until now, I’ve had to keep my laptop handy, and specifically avoid the IE7 upgrade on it.

However, Multiple-IE solves that problem, so now I’m running IE6 (and 5.5 for good measure) on my primary workstation. Every version of IE, all the way back to 3.0, is included in one handy installer that you can download, and when you run it, you can simply select which legacy version(s) of IE you want to install. It won’t mess up your IE7 at all — at least, it didn’t for me.

Yep…Internet Explorer 3, baby. In case you wanted to, you know, hit up www.whataburger.com and giggle yourself silly like it’s 1996 all over again. (“You mean they have a Coca-Cola website? Who the hell would want to go to a website about Coca-Cola?” – Me, eleven years ago)