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> Which they do, they've been offering complete VM images with various combinations of Windows and IE for some time, the current offering is XP + IE6, Vista + IE7, Win7 + IE8 and Win7 + IE9

I've used the IEVMs project on github to install these VMs before; it failed. I'm trying it again as we speak, maybe it's a viable solution, maybe not.

> IE9's devtools are significantly better than IE8's: more feature and much more stability. They are nowhere near WDT/Firebug yet (or even Dragonfly), but they are a huge improvement over the POS that IE8's devtools are.

Obviously the problem here is that IE9 represents 25% of the currently in-use IE browsers and has (to quote rey bango, http://blog.reybango.com/2012/05/08/hey-paydirt-your-site-wo...) 35% world-wide Win7 marketshare, which as I saw somewhere (maybe arstechnica) only has 50% marketshare. So you're looking at ~17.5% give or take for other versions of windows running IE9, call it a conservative 25% adoption for all IEs across the web.

TL:DR; IE9 has a ways to go before it's new amazing developer tools are valued significantly. Until then, we're still stuck with IE6-8 ):

You make valid points; and the VMs available on their site should help testing availability. It's too bad that the debugging is still second-class and torture ):

> I've used the IEVMs project on github to install these VMs before; it failed. I'm trying it again as we speak, maybe it's a viable solution, maybe not.

The official ones work. I'm actually installing the IE7 version as we speak, IE8 and IE9 are running fine in VirtualBox.

> I've used the IEVMs project on github to install these VMs before

I don't know about that, downloaded them straight from Microsoft's website.

> Obviously the problem here is that IE9 represents 25% of the currently in-use IE browsers

Note that IE9 can be switched to IE8's engine (there are differences with the official IE8 but not that much, so most of the rough work can be done with IE9's devtools even using the IE8 engine).

> IE9 has a ways to go before it's new amazing developer tools are valued significantly.

I did not say IE9's devtools were "amazing", because they are not (unless your only comparison basis is IE6 devtools or pre-firebug Firefox devtools that is). But they are significantly better than IE8's (let alone 6/7)

IE9's debug tools are hands down the best at this point in time. Although Chrome's is cacthing up, pound for pound you will be far more productive in IE9s debug tools then firebug, dragon fly or any other at the moment. I think there is just too much bias at play here.

I have downvoted you because that statement is so absolutely wrong.

I know because I am debugging a stupid, stupid IE only issue and I have to use a combination of Chromes debugger and judicious use of the console/repl in IE.

You can't even inspect an element that was added in code in IE.

wha? Hit the tiny html refresh button ctrl-b select away.

I sincerely hope this is a joke.

If it isn't, can you demonstrate where IE9 is objectively better than Chrome or Firebug? Because I can do the opposite. As a quick example, IE9 won't let you inspect elements inside of an iframe dynamically generated with JavaScript.

I've got a simpler one: you can't inspect an element on the console, it's going to print the first 10 properties (as a string, so you can't actually see their value when they're an object or an array) then it tells you to add the object to your watch (in a sub-tab of a different tab) to explore the rest.

In fact the console in general is still garbage, they improved support for the console API but still only handles barely half of it (no group/groupEnd, no time/timeEnd, no count, no trace, ...); the console does not understand (and is useless for) DOM objects (let alone jQuery objects); console API calls refuse to link to their source line; ...

Then there's the DOM inspector which will fail to display JS-generated DOM[0] and provides no way to edit the DOM live (beyond attributes, woot, attributes) (let alone put inspectors/breakpoints on DOM changes) and provides no way to see what events are bound on a node, or the network log which is a mess of useless tabs and the last network log to not know about JSON, or the javascript source/debugger which provides no way to jump to a given line (let alone a given function) and takes pain to split all useful information across 5 different tabs to ensure it's never possible to eyeball the situation you're in.

And that's 5mn into opening the thing. God, I can hardly believe somebody would state IE9's debug tools are good, they're not even remotely a match for Dragonfly, let alone Firebug or the WDT/CDT.

[0] super awesome when combined with applications which generate all of their DOM via code.

IE9 can easily handle your quick example. Check out http://jsfiddle.net/c8rN3/ then hit f12 bring up the developer tools. In the HTML tab click the tiny refresh button then hit the select element by click and select an element within the iframe.

> IE9 won't let you inspect elements inside of an iframe dynamically generated with JavaScript.

What the hell are you doing with iframes? Sounds like a hack job.

I'm adding an iframe to the page dynamically using JavaScript?

Irrelevant and besides the point.

Just to say I'd not come across the MS created VM images, so thumbs up for making my life a lot nicer!