I am developing on OS X. For testing I am using VirtualBox with windows VMs from http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads
When testing my web applications, should I be testing in IE10 on both Win7 and Win8, or can I safely assume that IE10 behaves identically on both platforms and only test on Win7? And the same question goes for IE11.
No, they are not identical, but they should be the same for the common features that both support. IE10 and 11 on Windows 8 and 8.1 support a number of extra features that are not included on Windows 8. They mostly relate to touch and device hardware support. Windows 8.* is a touch friendly OS while Win7 is a more traditional OS that does not include robust touch support.
Differences in IE10 for Windows 7:
- The "Touch" token is never included in the UA string
- Gesture DOM events are not fired.
- Scroll, Scrolling Snap Points, and Zooming CSS properties are not supported
- touch-action CSS property is not supported
msMaxTouchPoints
returns 0
More details can be found in the IE10 developer guide
Additionally the following are not supported in IE10 for Xbox One:
- Geolocation API
- prompt() method
- Copy/Paste with JavaScript
- File API
More details can be found in the Internet Explorer for Xbox One Developer Guide
Differences in IE11 for Windows 7:
- Device Orientation events are not supported
- Touch is not supported for HTML5 Drag and Drop
- Encrypted Media Extensions (DRM) is not supported
- High DPI is not supported (except the
devicePixelRatio
property)
- No Link highlighting
- No Media Source Extensions (media streaming, inc. MPEG Dash)
- Doesn’t support automatic phone number detection (converts phone like numbers into clickable link)
- No support for Screen Orientation API
- No support for SPDY protocol
More details can be found in the IE11 developer guide
Please visit Microsoft IE 10 Dev Guide:
IE Guide: