Download test VMs of IE for OSX, Linux or Windows

https://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools

by paukiatwee • 12 years ago

32 28 12 years ago

deadgrey19• 12 years ago

Finally! Microsoft has realised that real developers use OS X/Linux for development and don't have or care to test on Windows machines. This is a good thing for Microsoft and a good thing for the web!

jpgvm• 12 years ago

This has actually been around for ages. :)

yaur• 12 years ago

Its more than that. IE9 is the latest version that can be installed on XP and is not supported on later versions of Windows. And while its fine to tell users to get a better browser for hobby or internal sites having to deal with user still on XP is an unfortunate reality in a lot of cases.

Igglyboo2• 12 years ago

.NET developers aren't real developers? Most people in the game industry also swear religiously by windows/visual studio, apparently games are "real" software anymore.

benburton• 12 years ago

For even more convenience, use this script that automatically installs specific versions of IE VMs from the command line: https://github.com/xdissent/ievms

gaelow4• 12 years ago

For even more convenience I don't test for IE compliance. I test for ECMA and W3C standards compliance and don't write any vendor specific code.

pling3• 12 years ago

That means your stuff probably doesn't work on IE properly.

Not joking (and I know this sucks) but there are a shit ton of IE users out there still and I'm not willing to hang our product for convenience.

Vendor specific code is a reality we're going to have to live with for a long time yet.

matthewmacleod2• 12 years ago

I appreciate what you're trying to say there, but in practice most developers can't adopt this solution. Unless you're writing for known platforms (an internal web app, say) or building a throwaway demo, you will practically speaking have to compromise and support vendor-specific code where it's required by your users.

The goal of most real-world software is to deliver a working, usable product – not to produce lots of standards-compliant code.

Igglyboo2• 12 years ago

Writing for standards compliance is great when you don't care where/if your code works, what browser do you use that perfectly adheres to all the standards?

lanekelly• 12 years ago

Considering this, what are the odds of MS ever shipping IE clients for OSX and Linux?

extra88• 12 years ago

You mean ship IE for OS X again like they did before Apple made Safari? For a time, IE for Mac was the very best browser.

I could see them doing it if it was a gateway to an ecosystem the way Chrome is for Google. For "Linux" i.e. some specific variant that became popular with consumers.

pling3• 12 years ago

Medium for OSX. Unlikely for Linux - they'd be laughed out of the building.

They shipped IE5 for Unix a long while back believe it or not!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

I actually tripped over a solitary installation of it about 5 years ago as well!

As for IE for Mac - that was around forever ago.

nailer2• 12 years ago

Desktop Linux isn't a popular consumer platform (maybe Steam Box will change that).

For Android? It's possible. They do sell Android phones.

raddevon• 12 years ago

I notice on the page they have licensing that supersedes the Windows licensing included with the VMs. Unfortunately, I've had these VMs for a while, and they've been complaining for activation. So, although they have provided different licensing terms, they didn't bother to inform the software of this fact.

0x0• 12 years ago

I've found that booting the virtualbox VMs and then snapshotting them in a running state is pretty convenient. Restore to snapshot on every use, and you'll get at least an hour out of each session, resetting every time. Also the startup time is near instant.

matthewmacleod2• 12 years ago

The ievms installer (https://github.com/xdissent/ievms) automatically takes a clean snapshot on install, which allows you to restore to a blank "just installed" state, resetting the licensing timer in the process.

Still frustrating, but work-arounds are there if needed.

pling3• 12 years ago

This is damn annoying. We downloaded a whole set of them and after a bit they all died so you have to download them again periodically.

Not a viable solution.

In the end we just set up an activated VM (using MSDN licenses) with RDP enabled for each config on a Win 8.1 HyperV machine that sits in the corner of the office.

levosmetalo• 12 years ago

I consider IE testing and support as an extra feature in all my projects, and am quite happy to bill an extra hour for setting waiting to download and setting up VMs.

niteskunk• 12 years ago

I usually snapshot the VM states before first boot, and restore to that when activation runs out (annoying, but beats re-downloading everything).

If I recall correctly, some of them even come with instructions for re-arming the activation timer, which can get you a bit more time out of them.

caaig• 12 years ago

How are the mighty fallen.

I take some comfort in that MS now feel the need need to explain how I might use wget. But, sorry, but if you really want me to test my site against your proprietary browser, you need to remove your ugly time limited license, otherwise my site says "use a standards complaint browser, and I don't care care about your proprietary crap any more".

dave1010uk• 12 years ago

Anyone know of a similar way to test Safari? AFAICT it now only runs on Mac OS X and Apple don't provide any VMs for testing.

noir_lord• 12 years ago

You can run MacOSX in virtualbox if you the moon aligns for you (I've had some machines it worked ok and others I just couldn't get to work).

fatrachet• 12 years ago

You can find ready to go Mac OSX VMs online (torrent/usenet etc., usually 2-6gb).

They worked on any PC I tried them on, but without GPU acceleration, although I had to install a VMWare MacOS enabler (that was bundled with the VM) because VMWare disallows OSX by default I believe, might be different with Virtualbox.

nailer2• 12 years ago

Do they have Windows Phone VMs yet? You can run them under OS X with some work, but there's no touch cursor ATM so you're flying blind. MS could fix this pretty easily.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19402478/is-it-possible-t...

Download test VMs of IE for OSX, Linux or Windows

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