Xenocode is one of the new breed of virtualization companies. A distinct difference between Xenocode and other virtualization companies is that they specialize in application virtualization instead of the more popular OS-level virtualization. It all seems to work like magic – hitero difficult to multi-instance programs can be run as independent, click-once-and-run application.

Xenocode does application-level virtualization in an ingenious way. Their virtualization software creates a sandbox environment that contains internal representations of system resources, such as a file system and a registry. Targeted calls are passed to the host OS so actions like saving files locally still work, too. On top of all this, virtualized program download and execution can be kicked off via Firefox through a plugin.

What’s the point of all this? The single greatest innovation that’s come out of this is virtualization of IE 6 (and many other popular browsers and software). Now, there’s no particular need to run zany configurations or schemes in order to run IE 6 – no virtual machine, no dual install, no backup PC. This is a wonderful tool for web developers who need to check their work in IE 6, amongst others.

The Clickstart app only works on Windows PCs for now, but it’s a tremendous achievement in software development. Try it out, it’s simply amazing.