For anyone building websites, testing their compatibility and making them work on major IE versions is a nightmare.

However, since the latest versions (9 & 10), things are becoming more stable on the IE side and we need to create less IE-specific code.

In order to simplify this testing process, Microsoft has launched modern.IE, a platform that consists of tools and information for testing + improving IE compatibility.

The platform includes a web-based scanner that finds any issues and also tells how to fix them, virtual testing tools that works remote or local (for all operating systems) and detailed information regarding improving compatibility.

Google Chrome Frame is an open source Internet Explorer plugin that enables IE to use the open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine of Google Chrome.

It is actually not so fresh and around for a while, however, the stable version of the plugin is released lately and it is ready-to-use.

The plugin requires 2 steps to work:

• The user with IE 6, 7 or 8 should install it
• The website must add a tag to the web pages (detecting IE users and inserting the tag only for them is a good idea)

After that, any user with those IE versions will have a browser with better capabilities like support for HTML5, CSS3, better JS performance and more.

Google Chrome Frame is already used by many popular websites including DeviantArt, github or HootSuite.

It is definitely not a perfect solution as "a step from end users are required" but at least a step forward and almost doesn't add an extra effort for web designers/developers.

Personally, I'm a Firefox user as the web developer toolbar and Firebug is a must-have for a web designer/developer and, also, appreciate what Mozilla does for web.

Right, these tools or similar ones also exist on other browsers like Chrome (which can be my next browser with the performance offered).

There are also other great ones like Opera or Safari and it is very normal not to consider IE at all as every version used to come with its own issues.

Maybe, this can be changing as Internet Explorer 9 Beta is out with serious improvements like:

• new and faster JavaScript engine
• support for HTML5, CSS3 and SVG
• simpler UI
• and multiple features for faster browsing

It is not hard to guess that IE9 is still not a strong option for web designers/developers with the lack of dev-tools and reputation it has.

However, it is a big step forward and hopefully a good-enough product to motivate IE fans to upgrade and end up increasing the "modern browser usage ratio".

Also, considering the activity on the "web-dev products side of Microsoft", seeing new IE-compatible designer/developer tools in the near future won't be a surprise.

P.S. Internet Explorer 9 Beta only works with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Selectivizr is a JavaScript library that emulates CSS3 pseudo-classes and attribute selectors in Internet Explorer 6-8.

Once included in web pages, rest is done automatically.

The library requires a JavaScript framework to run and many popular ones are supported like Query, MooTools, YUI, Dojo, Prototype and more.

And, if there are multiple JS frameworks inserted in the web page, Selectivizr chooses the most suitable one for the job.

PIE (Progressive Internet Explorer) is an IE attached behavior (.htc file) that enables Internet Explorer 6-8 to recognize and display a number of CSS3 properties.

There is almost no difference in coding for the CSS properties. It doesn't require any vendor prefixes (like border-radius rather than -moz-border-radius).

It is simply attached to an element in the CSS file like: behavior: url(PIE.htc); and adds support (full or partial) for the following CSS3 features:

• border-radius
• box-shadow
• border-image
• multiple background images
• linear-gradient as background image

And, the missing CSS3 properties are under development.

There are various solutions for adding CSS3 support to Internet Explorer and here is another one that works pretty good.

IE-CSS3 is a script (.htc file) which can be mentioned within the CSS file (like behavior: url(ie-css3.htc);) and enables IE to support:

• border-radius
• box-shadow
• text-shadow

properties (which are the most popular ones).

It simply rebuilds the elements -which IE-CSS3 is applied- with VML (an IE-specific vector drawing language).

In order to prevent the script break the output in other browsers, it is definitely a good idea to use it in IE-specific CSS files.

BrowserLab, a web-based service by Adobe, enables you to test websites on multiple browsers and OSs.

It is possible to create a custom browser set where the screenshots will be created only for those browsers (also helps speeding up the results).

Screenshots can be previewed in 2-up or onion-skin views which makes comparing multiple versions easier and x/y rulers can be used for sensitive measurements..

The service currently supports different Firefox, Safari and IE versions for Windows and Mac OS X. However, it is still in beta and new browsers are added within time.

BrowserLab is part of the Adobe CS Live and free for 1 year if you sign-up before April 30, 2011.

Although everyone tries hard to make websites work with every browser, they are generally not 100% compatible.

And, with the increasing usage of HTML5+CSS3, they are becoming incompatible with more and more browsers everyday.

Free The Foxes is a free JavaScript+HTML+CSS-based solution for displaying good-looking notifications to visitors with a incompatible browser.

With the help of a simple configuration file, it is possible to rate browsers and their versions where the notification window displays result according to these ratings.

The window also guides users to download a better browser with the options and their download links.

As we know, Internet Explorer 6,7 and 8 do not support the new HTML5 elements which result in messy outputs.

However, thanks to Remy Sharp, there is the popular HTML5 enabling script which adds HTML5 capabilities to IE.

It is a great script and supports most of the HTML5 elements but missing one feature which is "printing HTML5 elements from IE"..

There is now an alternative named IE Print Protector which helps IE to render HTML5 elements correctly, both on screen and in print.

It simply replaces HTML5 elements with supported fallback elements (like div and span) when you print.

And, it doesn't forget to create temporary styles in parallel to the replaced ones to match the look and feel.

Every web designer and developer probably have bad memories with Internet Explorer. And this is mostly because the browser compiling (or used to do so) CSS properties differently compared to the standards.

IEcss.com is a website which helps us to better understand the reasons behind this incompatibility.

It shares a chart of user agent style sheets (CSS styles that are applied by default) for the major versions of Internet Explorer; IE6, IE7, IE8, and IE9 Platform Preview.

The chart includes values for almost every CSS property and they can be downloaded per browser.