Struggling to improve your texting experience with Internet Explorer online? Don’t worry! We are here for you. Our article will explore multiple best practices, tools, and techniques for testing legacy apps in Internet Explorer. During our entire discussion, our primary goal will be to ensure a smooth user experience for you.
With the continuous evolution of modern web standards, it becomes a massive challenge to maintain the compatibility of your applications with legacy systems. Although Internet Explorer Online has been officially retired, it has a very important role in ensuring compatibility with older legacy web apps.
You must remember that these apps were created in an era where Internet’s Explorer was the dominant player. Moreover, migrating these apps to modern standards has become a very hectic and time-consuming process.
Understanding the Need for Testing in Internet Explorer
As we all know, Internet Explorer has been retired to create the path for its more advanced counterpart, Microsoft Edge Online. It is also important to understand that multiple organizations still rely on these legacy web browsers as their initial apps were built on proprietary technologies like VBScript, ActiveX, and other older JavaScript standards that ran on Internet Explorer.
This dependency makes Internet’s Explorer a very important part of the modern software development cycle for organizations, including government, healthcare, and finance.
To further improve our understanding regarding this step, let us divert our attention towards some of the major reasons that justify the inclusion of Internet Explorer in the modern testing cycle:
Older enterprise apps were designed specifically for the rendering engine of Internet’s Explorer. These applications may not function as expected if we render them on modern web browsers.
Organizations that are subject to specific security requirements may not be able to migrate their legacy applications to newer browser versions. This is because to perform this process, they have to go through a hectic and time-consuming code rewriting process. It is needless to say, this process also comes with massive expenses.
Finally, various features like ActiveX controls and certain manipulation techniques were widely used during the earlier web development era when Internet Explorer was dominant. Therefore, this testing process also becomes an IE-specific task.
Challenges in Testing Legacy Applications in Internet Explorer
To properly understand the process of improving app testing on Internet Explorer online, you must have a clear idea about all the challenges that you will face in this process. To shed more light on this area, we have mentioned some of the most important ones in this list:
Internet Explorer versions, especially all the versions earlier than Internet’s Explorer 8, render HTML and CSS inconsistently compared to modern browsers. This can give rise to issues like layout and design variables.
Internet Explorer has incomplete support for ECMAScript 6 and newer JavaScript features. This lack of support can cause potential issues in the core functioning of the application.
Internet Explorer also has a highly outdated security model that runs on ActiveX controls and other older plugins. This can give rise to very serious risks in terms of user data security and overall privacy of the architecture.
Internet Explorer is often slow in performance compared to the modern browsers. This is due to its older rendering engine and lack of optimization for the modern hardware that will be running it.
Various organizations use Internet Explorer’s compatibility mode for emulating older browser versions including Internet Explorer 7 or 8. This compatibility mode can cause various issues when testing across multiple versions at the same time.
Tools for Testing Legacy Applications in Internet Explorer
Let us now divert our attention toward some of the most effective tools that you can use to streamline the testing process for Internet Explorer online. These tools are specifically designed to help the teams ensure the functionality of their apps across multiple versions of Internet Explorer:
IE Mode of Microsoft Edge
After the release of Microsoft Edge, it comes with a built-in solution for testing legacy applications within the newest browser. The IE mode within Microsoft Edge online will allow the users to run websites in a compatibility mode. This mode will help mimic various functionalities of Internet Explorer.
This feature would be particularly useful as it will enable the developers to view and interact with websites as if they were being natively loaded within Internet Explorer.
Want to use the IE mode of Microsoft Edge? Simply follow the steps that we have given below:
Begin by opening Edge and navigating to the default browser option that will be available under the browser settings option.
Now, toggle the option to allow sites to be loaded in Internet Explorer mode.
After this, you simply have to right-click the tab and select “Reload in Internet Explorer mode” while viewing your website.
Using IE mode, you will have access to a smooth transition for legacy apps while allowing users to take advantage of modern browser features like input performance and increased security.
Virtual Machines With Internet Explorer
If your team requires a more controlled environment. You can consider using virtual machines with different versions of Internet Explorer as the most effective solution. Microsoft provides free Internet Explorer-specific virtual machines through their Modern.IE initiative.
All these virtual machines will help you run older versions of Windows with Internet Explorer preinstalled in them. The most important goal of this approach is to perform accurate testing without requiring physical machines. You can access these virtual machines using the following
platforms:
- Hyper-V
- VMware
- VirtualBox
- Parallels
All the above virtual machines ensure that the testers will view the exact behavior that a user will see with a native Internet Explorer installation.
LambdaTest
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform. That lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. This device farm provides the perfect balance between legacy browsers like Internet Explorer Online and modern browsers like Microsoft Edge Online.
LambdaTest will also help you in the test debugging and troubleshooting process. This is because after completing all the testing processes. LambdaTest will create a comprehensive test report that will provide you with multiple screenshots and videos. Using this data, you can easily navigate to the faulty elements and perform the required resolution steps.
Best Practices for Testing in Internet Explorer
We advise the testers to incorporate the following best practices within their testing infrastructure to further ensure the proper productivity and quality of Internet Explorer testing processes:
Graceful Degradation Vs. Progressive Enhancement
If your applications have modern enhancements. It’s important to apply either progressive enhancement or graceful degradation to maintain their functioning on Internet Explorer.
Graceful degradation ensures that the app works with modern browsers. And scales down its functionality for older browsers like Internet’s Explorer. The primary principle is that the key features will continue to function while less critical ones may be reduced or completely disabled.
On the other hand, in progressive enhancement, you will ensure that the basic functionality works in all browsers, including older versions of Internet Explorer. For the newer browsers, you can take advantage of advanced features and implement better application performance.
Using Polyfills and Shims
Due to the outdated state of Internet Explorer’s JavaScript engine, various modern features will not be supported by it. In such cases polyfills and shims will help you to bridge the gap by mimicking modern functionality on older browser versions as well.
You can also consider implementing popular libraries like Polyfill.io or es5-shim to add missing functionalities. A great example will be the ability to use polyfills for implementing fetch() or Promise in Internet’s Explorer 10 or even in Internet Explorer 11.
In short, we can consider polyfills and shims as a compatibility layer that helps your application to adapt itself based on the browser that it is being accessed on.
Conditional Comments
Conditional comments were one of the most popular ways of delivering browser-specific code to Internet Explorer. The most attractive part of this approach was that it did not affect modern browsers. Although it is no longer supported in Internet’s Explorer 10 or newer versions, it is still widely used for the earlier versions.
To include the internal explorer style sheets or scripts using this method, you simply have to enter the following code in the terminal window:
Using the above technique, you can make sure that the application is compatible with older. And newer browser versions without implementing cluttering code that is specifically meant for modern browsers.
Monitor Browser-Specific Security Settings
Finally, Internet Explorer has specific security zones and settings that can massively impact how applications behave. This is particularly visible in those apps that massively rely on ActiveX controls or local file access.
To ensure that these features do not affect the code functioning of your app. It is very important to test with various security settings. This process will also become useful for enterprise environments that have strict security policies in place. This is because these enterprise servers have to handle a lot of sensitive user information simultaneously.
Future Road For Migration to Modern Browsers
While maintaining legacy apps in Internet Explorer is very important for certain enterprises. And organizations, it is also important to properly plan for the future. This is because as security vulnerabilities increase and the support reduces, migration to modern browsers will become the only possible way forward.
The first step should be to gradually update your app’s code base to remove Internet’s Explorer-specific dependencies from its core architecture.
With the reduced support for Internet’s Explorer. Your next step should be to move to frameworks like React, View.js, or Angular. This transition will help your app to function across all modern browsers and continuously provide the best end-user experience.
The final step in this process is to use the IE mode in Internet Explorer in case immediate migration isn’t possible for your organization. This approach will provide a short-term solution while planning for full modernization in the coming years.
The Bottom Line
Based on all the factors that we discussed in this article. We can safely say that testing legacy apps in Internet Explorer will present a unique set of challenges. But by using the right tools and techniques, you can ensure a smooth user experience on this browser. By implementing all the best practices that we discussed. You can maintain application compatibility without compromising the quality of your apps.
However, while maintaining the compatibility of Internet Explorer. You should also remember that it is very important to future proof your applications. To achieve this process, you must consider the route to transition them to modern browsers as one of the most important long-term goals.
