How can I run multiple versions of IE with different sessions

Question

I'm developing a web application that is targeted at IE and during testing would like to log in as a number of different users and test their interactions with each other.

At present I have to log in and out to switch users; Opening another window just overrides the cookies/session.

Is there any way to get IE to run completely seperate; I can run firefox or chrome and get another session but the app isn't supported in these browsers.

Answer 1

How about running it as a different user?

For instance,

runas /user:domain\account iexplore.exe

Answer 2

One potential solution is running a variety of different Virtual Machines with varying setups from your PC. Virtual PC 2007 is a free download from Microsoft which makes the creation of Virtual Machines very simple and straight forward.

Presuming you have a moderately powered PC resources shouldn't be much of an issue either.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

There's also MultipleIEs although I don't think it uses different sessions ... worth a try though.

MultipleIEs

Answer 3

There is also IECollection.

Answer 4

This might not be the final solution to your problem, but what I have observed is, that for example RSS Bandit - an RSS reader that uses IE as rendering engine - seems to have a different Cookie base than the "real Internet Explorer". That way you can have two (IE based) browser sessions at the same time.

Not sure if - and when - that applies to other applications.

Answer 5

You could use a virtualization tool like vmware and run a second (or more if you have enough RAM) instance of windows with its own IE.

And this tool sounds like it could achieve the same for IE only (without the hassle of setting up an entire windows installation): http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/05/google-buys-greenborder-security.html

Answer 6

This might be a better solution:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/22/run-separate-isolated-ie8-window-frame-session-with-nomerge-switch-for-multiple-logins/

run ie8 with -nomerge flag or use new session from menu...

Answer 7

How about using IE Tester and testing also for other IE versions?

http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

How having two different domains for the same machine? this way different cookies will be used for different domains ("servres").