Almost all non-IE browsers (Opera, Firebird, Mozilla etc) allow separate versions to be installed on the same machine/OS. Only Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) egregiously disallows this, and you can only “update” and “patch” an IE installation with those pesky service packs. But Joe Maddalone has shown that needn’t be the case anymore!
Almost all other browsers — Opera, Firebird, Mozilla etc — allow separate versions to be installed on the same machine and OS. Only Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) is egregious enough to disallow this. You can only “update” and “patch” an IE installation with those never-ending service packs. Joe Maddalone doesn’t think so.
Because that’s about to change. It looks like Joe has found a way to install and run multiple versions of IE on one machine + OS (and I found this through postings on rewind and humanlint). The discovery was sparked by Microsoft’s recent version of IE released to developers for testing their EOLAS patent resolution.
Although there’s no point regurgitating info that Joe has already put up on his website, Insert Title Website Design (and you can his complete instructions here, plus see what it’ll look like from a screenshot on Joe Maddalone’s website), I enlist the exact steps below in a for-dummies style.
Installing IE 5.5 service pack 2
- First, let’s get the IE 5.5 sp2 build. In case you didn’t know, browsers.evolt.org has a comprehensive, downloadable collection of all the versions of all browsers ever (ok, almost all) so let us get our IE 5.5 Service Pack 2 from there.
- Second, we’ll be needing a compression tool to un-compress the *.cab cabinet files that Microsoft used to package IE builds in. One such tool is WinRAR.
TIP: It is probably a good idea to have *.cab files associated with WinRAR anyway.
- Assuming you have both of the above, let’s create a new folder for our download file. E.g.,
c:\ie55 - Copy the downloaded IE 5.5 install file (called
ie55sp2.exe) into this folder. - Now, double-click the EXE file to execute it. It will do its thing in a DOS prompt and a folder will be created for you. E.g.,
- Create a new folder in the
c:\ie55folder calledtemp(or anything). So we have a folderc:\ie55\temp. - Now find the following 5 files in your
c:\ie55\IE 5.5 SP2 Fullfolder:IENT_S1.CAB
IENT_S2.CAB
IENT_S3.CAB
IENT_S4.CAB
IENT_S5.CAB - Un-cab EACH of these files into the
c:\ie55\tempfolder.NOTE: I have the *.cab extension associated with WinRAR on my machine, so I could just double-click these files and WinRAR pops-up automatically.Each of these files will actually unzip to a file with the SAME NAME but without the S. For instance,
IENT_S1.CAB — > will uncompress into IENT_2.CAB
IENT_S2.CAB — > will uncompress into IENT_2.CAB
…etc… - Now, move into the
c:\ie55\tempfolder and UN-CAB the resulting 5 files again. Un-cab all the files into the samec:\ie55\tempfolder too. Ignore any warnings that WinRAR gives you about a file “not being the first volume”. - Next, find and DELETE the following 2 files from your
c:\ie55\tempfolder:SHLWAPI.DLL
COMCTL32.DLL (if you find it, I didn’t) - Last, create a blank text file (using Notepad, for e.g.) in the
c:\ie55\tempfolderand name it, EXACTLY:IEXPLORE.exe.local - Now execute the
IEXPLORE.EXEfile. That’s your IE 5.5 service pack 2! It may say (in HELP | ABOUT) that it is IE 6.0, or whatever you have, but it is running as IE 5.5. - Just to confirm I tried the following simple code to check the browsers, and it works!
<? echo ‘Browser: ’ . $_SERVER[“HTTP_USER_AGENT”]; ?>
And here’s the output:
If everything went well, you should now have two browsers!
This post is tagged Tips/Tricks
