Internet Explorer Screenshot service

Web developers are struggling every day to make that website or user interface compatible with as many browsers as possible.

There are standards (I hear you say). Yes, there are! W3C is a consortium which defines recommendations. However, these recommendations are sometimes vague and most often do not cover innovative/new ideas (standards are often defined after a new technology is already in use). Therefore, browser's rendering engine's output will vary and must be tested by developers.

On windows, it is not possible to install more than one Internet Explorer version, because newer versions tend to replace older versions (IIRC it was possible to install IE4 and IE5 on the same box). This is a problem for web developers (designers and programmers) because there is often a need to support more than one version (making sure the current project works in the most used environment as well as in future/older browsers).

Linux, wine and ies4linux come in handy in this situation. combined with Xvfb and some standard *nix tools (like ImageMagick and WindowMaker) make it possible to create a web service for capturing screenshots of sites in IE 5, 5.5, 6 and 7.

Currently I am working on a appliance (VMWare image) as well as a howto on how to do this.