And there is ‘Compatibility View’. Developers can specify, by adding a specific meta tag, that IE7 rendering should be used. There seem to be some tricky aspects related to Compatibility View:

• It’s not 100% compatible with the ‘real’ IE7
• For intranets IE8 will behave differently, using smart defaults based on zone evaluation. That by itself sounds alarming. What it means is that Microsoft (and sadly they’re right) assumes that a lot of intranets, also called line of business applications, will malfunction when confronted with a new browser.

The latter will be something to take into account when developing and testing intranets. Another concern I heard about (and share) is that if a lot of developers will start using Compatibility View, a lot of bad practices will stick around and development for IE as a whole will ‘freeze’. Instead of move forward to a more standards compliant level.

As IE6 isn’t dead yet there are now three IE versions to test for. Microsoft offers free downloadable virtual machines with IEx installed as a solution. Virtualization is ‘hot’ but some might find Microsoft’s solution a bit of a hassle. IETester looks like a nice alternative (haven’t tried it yet) altough it seems to require Vista.