There are a few ways to test your site appearance in different web-browsers. In this article I would tell you the most  simple one which requires local browsers installed on your PC.

Solutions:

• Install a few OS on one PC
• Install a few OS on different PCs

If you have no a required browser, you can easy find it in Internet.

In addition, you can download an installer (multiple_ie) that is able to install  multiple versions of IE :
Install multiple versions of IE on your PC. You can download the installer (which is about 10Mb) on the product page.

There is another tool: IETester – free web-browser that allows testing of pages in IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows Vista and XP. You can download IETester (23.8MB) on its site.

IE7 Standalone – is another solution that works perfectly and supports Conditional comments. This utility is easy-to-install and it allows IE7 to install to any folder so there is no problem with Microsoft validation. Installation:

• Download distribution kit from official Microsoft website but don’t install it
• Download the utility from the developers site.
• Extract the file to the required folder and run “IE7 Standalone Setup.bat”. Installation process will start.
• Run IE7.bat from the same folder to work in Internet Explorer 7.

Configuring of virtual machines

There is an option to install OS that works under virtual machines:

• Virtual PC – free OS that allows to install any system. However, it is officially supported by Windows only.
• VMWare – supports various OS, has server release. You need to get registered (It’s free) to get free server version (www.vmware.com/products/server/). You  can order as much serial numbers as you need being registered once. Is ideally installed to Windows XP.

Download web-browsers from here:

Browsers websites

• Mozilla Firefox (Windows, Linux)
• Opera (Windows, Linux)
• Safari (Mac, PC)