Testing in IE6 from OSX: VirtualBox settings or good alternative

I'm needing to test web applications in IE6,7 from my OSX workstation. I develop and run test servers locally on my OSX system. Currently have VirtualBox running Windows XP.

Question: How do I view pages in IE (the guest os) that are hosted from OSX (the host os)?

From Firefox on the host (OSX) the page can be viewed at localhost:8084, or localhost:8000 AND the workstation's IP of 192.168.1.100:8084 or :8000 (depending if I'm developing with Tomcat/JSP or Django).

VBox Netw开发者_运维知识库ork options: NAT, Bridged, Internal, Host Only. I'm currently using Bridged.

Bridged mode allows the guest OS to use an IP on the same network as your host. Because of this, you should be able to access the page the same way- via your workstation's IP. The only reason I could see this not working would be if the port on your host is only accessible via localhost, of if the web server only serves to localhost.

In a tutorial I used to help me get a folder from my host OS shared with a guest OS I noticed that the guest OS refers to the host OS as vboxsvr, example \\vboxsvr\sharename.

If you try to access your website from the guest OS via http://vboxsvr:8084 or http://vboxsvr:80000 it might bring up your site assuming that vboxsvr is a universal way to refer to the host OS from the guest.

You may also need to make sure you have the guest additions installed.

I use a tool from the site: http://spoon.net/browsers/

I don't know if this works on OSX but it works amazing on windows. I can view any of my web page developments on any web browser including IE 6,7,8 firefox, safari, opera etc. Check it out. I use it almost everyday for my company. Let me know if it work on OSX.