Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/11/02/announcing-remoteie-test-the-latest-ie-on-windows-mac-os-x-ios-and-android.aspx

by robin_reala • 12 years ago

187 84 12 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

132• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I'm getting the feel for this at all. It's almost as if it's targeted at reducing friction for people to test with internet explorer, but you need a Microsoft account to use it, you are limited to VNC speeds, and you need to expose a webserver to the internet with your test service on it. There's not many situations I can think of that this would be useful, especially if it's something finicky like scrolling performance that needs debugging.

On the other hand, Microsoft offers a bunch of freely downloadable virtual machines with every version of Internet Explorer you could care to test in[1]. Why would anybody in the world want to use this particular product for testing over the alternative?

[1] https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

quonn• 12 years ago

This probably targets people who would otherwise not test their website with IE, not those who do web development for a living. I like it.

pmontra• 12 years ago

Well, it saves time compared to having to download the VMs and keep them up to date. Nevertheless I'll keep downloading the VMs and do without a MS account and let them in into my exposed server. If the VMs call home I can disable their networking in VirtualBox.

smacktoward• 12 years ago

Because the alternative (the downloadable VMs) is a gigantic, unbelievable pain in the ass.

1) You have to download a complete system image of a machine running the specific versions of Windows and IE you're interested in testing against. Each of these images can require downloading up to 4 DVDs worth of data just to get it bootstrapped, which can take forever even on a fast pipe.

2) Want to test against a different version of Windows, or IE, or both? Now you get to download 4 more DVDs, all over again! (Yep, if you started testing, say, IE9 on Windows 7, and now you want to test against IE10, you have to download a whole new virtual machine from scratch.)

3) For reasons known only to Microsoft, they don't distribute the VM images as unified packages; instead, they're a bunch of DVD-size RAR files that have to be assembled into a complete VM image after downloading. One of those RARs get corrupted en route? Back to downloading!

4) RAR files? In 2014? For serious? Yes, RAR files, for serious.

5) Now you've made it through the epic download, assembled your VM image, and are ready to get started. Hey, guess what! Microsoft is so paranoid about the chance that you're an Evil Pirate™ rather than a legitimate developer that they put a special surprise in the VM, just for you: when it reaches the end of the calendar quarter, the VM self-destructs. Yes, you read that right -- after all that, this VM that you marched through Hell to put together becomes useless after three months at most. So at that point, you get to do all the stuff listed above again.

(Yes, I know there are hacks you can make in the registry to extend this time for an extra quarter or two. It's still insulting.)

The whole process is such a pain that people have written tools like ievms (https://github.com/xdissent/ievms) just to automate the endless, tedious downloading-unpacking-installing-self-destructing-downloading-etc. cycle. And vendors like BrowserStack (http://www.browserstack.com/) make good money charging people to do the same thing they could conceivably do with the VMs, just because using the VMs hurts so much people will happily pay to avoid it.

And the kicker: all of this nonsense, of course, is only necessary because you can't install two versions of IE side-by-side. And the only reason you can't install two versions of IE side-by-side is because Microsoft, back when it was Pure Evil, decided to make it that way to force people to upgrade Windows when they wanted to upgrade IE.

Microsoft management are considerably more enlightened these days than they were back then. But this huge, ugly, painful, completely unnecessary wart on the Windows development experience that they forced upon the world back then still persists, either because someone in Redmond thinks it's a good idea, or just out of sheer laziness.

132• 12 years ago

The segmented downloads is a bit of a strange choice, granted. I thought it might have been to do with FAT32 but the decompressed file would be bigger than the 32bit limit anyway. The other stuff I don't really care about that much, for it's flaws it was still quite nice of the system to be supplied in the first place.

yuhong4• 12 years ago

decided to make it that way to force people to upgrade Windows when they wanted to upgrade IE.

Not true.

acdha7• 12 years ago

You're making it sound a bit harder to download than it needs to be – they do provide a handy curl snippet to download all of the files in one batch – and you can keep unpacking the same download repeatedly since it's time-locked from when you start it.

Otherwise, though, I completely agree that it's harder than it needs to be. The big problem you left out are the Windows updates – both because that new VM is going to be useless at first until it installs hundreds of updates (saving files is a 100% CPU for hours NP-hard problem in Microsoft-land) and because unless you specifically disable it Windows Update will automatically upgrade you to the latest version of IE.

the only reason you can't install two versions of IE side-by-side is because Microsoft, back when it was Pure Evil, decided to make it that way to force people to upgrade Windows when they wanted to upgrade IE

The actual goal was to win the browser wars by ensuring that every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer, knowing that many people would never pay for a copy of Netscape if they already had a browser. Creating dependencies around the OS was an attempt to avoid anti-bundling laws and, like many of the other decisions they made in the 90s, a bad idea the entire industry has spent billions coping with. I'm sure there's plenty of regret now as they have to deal with all of the enterprise customers who refuse to upgrade because they don't know what upgrading the system browser will break.

drinchev• 12 years ago

I totally agree. It would really make more sense if they put their effort and resources into releasing IE 9 or why not 10 for Windows XP [1]. I assume this would really eliminate the purpose of testing to those older IEs.

I rarely open IE 10 for testing, anyway. I assume if my website does work on latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari it will work also on recent Internet Explorers ( >= 10 ). If it doesn't work as expected, it's MS bug of a browser that users can actually upgrade, so it's not such a big deal.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_versions#Wind...

pgsuckz• 12 years ago

Curious.. what's wrong with RAR files?

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

all of this nonsense, of course, is only necessary because you can't install two versions of IE side-by-side [...] still persists, either because someone in Redmond thinks it's a good idea, or just out of sheer laziness.

Or because they have bigger fish to fry. It's not like they have `define AllowMultipleIEinstalls 0 they can just flip.

Having multiple versions of any application installed side-by-side has always been a hit-or-miss feature, precisely because few people care. Hell, most of the time I want to overwrite the old version. Do you remember the days when Java was installed side-by-side, and you wound up with twelve different versions of Java? You could never be certain which one was active, and of course at least 9 of them were completely insecure by that point...

smackfu• 12 years ago

Each of these images can require downloading up to 4 DVDs worth of data just to get it bootstrapped, which can take forever even on a fast pipe.

Are they really 15 GB per image?

frankchn• 12 years ago

This also does not support localStorage, which makes testing some websites impossible.

Turing_Machine3• 12 years ago

I usually just use an Amazon EC2 instance for Windows browser testing. I've got an essentially bare Win machine image (just the common browsers). I fire it up and then use Remote Desktop to connect to it. Works pretty well (other than, as you say, being limited to Remote Desktop/VNC-like speeds).

Turing_Machine3• 12 years ago

Another big advantage of doing this over using a local VM is that when you have to run the inevitable 12 terabyte software update (with six reboots) after not using it for a while, the updates download at Amazon data center speed, not your local connection speed.

Just make sure to save the updated machine image afterward. :-)

jrochkind12• 12 years ago

If you have a copy of Windows (legally or one you are willing to use anyway), I find installing it on a VirtualBox VM more convenient (and entirely free) than Remote Desktop to an EC2. And faster.

The alternatives discussed here are for when you don't have and don't want to pay for a Windows license, and are unwilling to break the law and pirate it as part of your job.

guyht• 12 years ago

This is really great, but I am much more interested in being able to test older (9/10) versions of IE as well.

jaredmcateer• 12 years ago

Yea I am fairly confident in my site working in IE11 if it works in Chrome & Firefox, not so much in 8 and 9.

dangrossman• 12 years ago

Microsoft provides free VM images for IE6 through 11 -- https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

willtheperson• 12 years ago

All I see is "IE Technical Preview" and when I try to connect "Please wait for user profile service" Anyone else getting that?

This highlights why I prefer to just have these as local virtual machines. When I'm working on a project and I need to do an IE pass, I don't want to rely on this server being available. Even things like BrowserStack, which are definitely nice, have been super laggy right when I happen to need them. Not to mention that you can't really gauge performance over a connection like this.

I do like the Modern IE iso's they are providing now though. Paired with Parallels, it's one click to download and initialize a new Windows/IE combo, and it lasts for (30?) days

JosephRedfern2• 12 years ago

There was a short delay, around 10/15s. After that, it was pretty smooth.

zuck92• 12 years ago

IE on iOS & Android, finally.

JosephRedfern2• 12 years ago

It's interesting to see how well they've managed to lock this down. You're able to view a list of usernames with access to the machine (or domain?) that your account is on. http://imgur.com/t1IP02T

zuck92• 12 years ago

How d'you find that?

crazysim• 12 years ago

I don't know how he got there but I can get a similar list by getting a Browse dialog out of Downloads and going to the security settings for a folder and looking at the dialog for selecting users to add to a folder's ACL.

silverwind• 12 years ago

It's sad to see that they have resort to such methods to keep their browser alive. Developers are beginning to skip IE testing because of this inconvenience.

I wish Microsoft would finally untie their Browser from the OS and provide standalone packages.

npsimons• 12 years ago

Agreed. My first thought when I saw this is that I hope people don't use it. I know that many people developing sites for a living can't afford to ignore IE, but I really think that IE incompatibility is MS's problem that they've foisted on everyone else. I wish more people would design sites to standards and when they get complaints about "bad design", kindly point IE users to MS tech support.

But that will never happen. The sad fact is that you have to cater to your audience, and almost all people will just click back and look for another site if your site doesn't render perfectly in their browser of choice (or in the case of IE, the only browser they've ever known, even though they didn't choose it). So much time and effort wasted due to MS's anti-competive practices and incompetence.

acdha7• 12 years ago

A great idea but it exposes a lot of rough edges in Azure:

1. The Microsoft Remote Desktop Mac app is a UI trainwreck – not just wasted space and odd keyboard shortcuts but things like the Azure login process disabling password managers and the one-time auth code via SMS service never arriving.

2. Azure's federated Live.com logins are broken, cycling between the login page and the console hitting you with a “You have logged out elsewhere”

3. In US East, US West, Southeast Asia and East Asia, connections hang (20+ minutes) at “Please wait for the User Profile Service”

I'm really looking forward to trying this service when Azure is more stable and, hopefully, they add older versions of IE.

molant6• 12 years ago

Hi acdha, 1. You can go to http://feedback.azure.com/forums/247748-azure-remoteapp and share your feedback with the Remote App team. They really want to make it as useful as possible and it is still on Preview so now is the moment to influence the team 3. Yes, we are working on it and should be fixed soon. Regarding the older versions of IE, unfortunately we are running on top of Server 2012 so we are locked to IE11+. At this moment you can use the dev tools and change the compat mode and we are thinking about adding Enterprise Mode to the service so you can test on "IE8".

yuhong4• 12 years ago

Actually Server 2012 R1 uses IE10.

acdha7• 12 years ago

Are bugs related to Remote Desktop performance best reported against the client or Remote App? It doesn't appear to support bitblts so simply moving a window is extremely jerky and things like CSS transitions are basically a slideshow.

Enterprise Mode would be useful since that's getting a bit of traction as an alternative to staying mired in IE8.

pippy• 12 years ago

Also major issues off the top of my head:

Azure VM instances that run in a VPN have major network issues that are caused by the MS infrastructure.

Depending on the latency you won't get the 'feel' for many websites, important nowadays with CSS transitions and WebGL.

MSIE is circling the train in terms of marketshare. The VMs MS provided for testing were a godsend, but forcing devs to give up their work flow would likely result in them just dropping MSIE support.

duncans• 12 years ago

FYI: it's "circling the drain"

molant6• 12 years ago

If that is important to you we have also made available all versions of IE in Virtual Machines at https://www.modern.ie

pilif• 12 years ago

The Microsoft Remote Desktop Mac app is a UI trainwreck

agreed. That's why I'm always using CoRD (http://cord.sourceforge.net) for any kind of RDP use on the mac (I don't know whether it would work with this remote IE thing, but for sysadmining here and then, CoRD > Remote Desktop any day)

jerrysievert• 12 years ago

This sounds a lot like the issues I had a little over a year ago. Most of the issues didn't seem to be related to Azure itself, but instead to the logging in and account management experience. It's a shame, login should be a solved issue at this point, but very few people get it right.

I don't want yet another email address to use a service, Flickr having required a Yahoo.com email address is a prime example, as is Azure.

jongalloway2• 12 years ago

Microsoft accounts work with any email. Mine has always been my Gmail address, works fine. I think the reason people think you need an outlook or hotmail address is because of the example prompt text on account sign up.

ecaron• 12 years ago

Now if only Apple would do the same thing for Safari...

eddieroger• 12 years ago

Or you could just run any WebKit browser on Windows.

acdha7• 12 years ago

1. WebKit is not created equal – if you need to test anything related to system integration (e.g. font rendering, video/audio, etc.) you need real Safari. You're also exposed to differences in the WebKit version + vendor patches.

2. That doesn't help at all if you need to test against Mac or iOS clients and want the underlying layers to match. I've found a ton of Unicode-support related issues rendering text properly which worked on Windows 7 or maybe only 8 but not OS X (or earlier versions of windows, etc.). Similar problems exist for HTML5 media playback.

bdcravens• 12 years ago

It's not free, but I really like Browser Stack.

nailer3• 12 years ago

Browser Stack isn't usable in Europe, at least, due to latency. As in 'type characters and wait for them to appear on screen' or 'Eclipse' slow. modern.ie originally used it, I hope moving to their own system speeds up responsiveness.

Eiriksmal• 12 years ago

Wait a second... Eclipse as in the naturally-occurring phenomena or the IDE? I just got to view my first partial eclipse two weeks ago and have seen firsthand how slowly the moon creeps across the sun and don't really think Eclipse the software is that slow.

nailer3• 12 years ago

Remember, this uses Azure: if you're in Western Europe, pick 'Northern Europe' and not 'Western Europe' for better locality. See http://www.robblackwell.org.uk/2011/04/12/azure-northern-eur...

Joeri• 12 years ago

Not being able to access localhost makes this much less useful than it could be. Does anyone know of any good tools to temporarily tunnel localhost onto a public URL?

arathunku• 12 years ago

Have you seen ngrok.com?

lectrick• 12 years ago

I always used Crossover Mac for this. Might not be pixel perfect but exposes rendering issues.

pimlottc• 12 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but displaying 4 wobbly out-of-sync vine videos at once is really distracting.

vlunkr• 12 years ago

And why didn't they use a screen recorder instead of shaky camera recordings? Looks really unprofessional.

hesselink• 12 years ago

This seems to work really well (for me at least) and I like the idea. However, for actually testing the product we're building it's currently not usable, since they've disabled cookies completely. Our product requires a login, so I guess we'll have to stick with the VMs for now.

molant6• 12 years ago

Cookies will be enabled soon :)

grandalf2• 12 years ago

1) Clicked the link and downloaded/installed the app from the Mac App Store.

2) signed in with my work Microsoft account.

3) No Internet Explorer listed under remote apps.

4) Signed out and tried to sign in with my personal Microsoft account.

5) Mistyped the absurdly difficult Captcha 5 times and decided to stop wasting time trying to play with this.

EDIT: Just now received an email inviting me to try remoteIE with my work MS account. I just need to log back in and refresh to see invitations.

EDIT2: Tried logging back in and hitting refresh and it's still not there. I forgot to mention that it prompts me with a message that remoteapp is not available and that I may sign up for a free trial. If you decline the free trial you are immediately logged out! Still no IE.

molant6• 12 years ago

Give it a try again. We've done some changes on the server side so you should see IE and log into IE much faster. Just make sure to use the same email as the one you received the notification.

grandalf2• 12 years ago

Tried logging out/in and still not seeing IE.

FWIW I tried Paint and the experience is pretty awesome.

callesgg• 12 years ago

In my world I should not have to test the latest browsers. If it works in a modern browser, I would assume a even newer browser would not be less standardised.

To be honest do I only use and develop in Firefox and these days it generally works on all other browsers as well.

gcb0• 12 years ago

great. now you will

be blocked occasionally when site is down or your connection is bad.

not be able to save a predefined vm and reboot it every 30 days like before.

they will certainly not take into account your important project that is due tomorrow when planning for site upgrades as you would if it were local.

and to top my day: now i will have to wait legal to allow me to test secret project of the day on a3rd party service.

... please Microsoft, don't pull an apple and take those vms down just yet.

dstorey• 12 years ago

The VMs are not going anywhere. This is an additional service for those that can’t or don’t want to use virtual machines, or find this more convenient.

slipstream-2• 12 years ago

I can't help noticing the RemoteIE VM uses a later build of Threshold Server than is publicly available (public build is 9841.fbl_release, this uses 9860.winmain).

I guess there's no chance MS will release the ISO of said build though, especially because this build includes the usual private-build watermarks first introduced in Windows 8.

yuhong4• 12 years ago

9860 is publicly available though, at least the client version.

slipstream-2• 12 years ago

9860.fbl_release is publicly available.

RemoteIE uses 9860.winmain (as in, it's 9860 from the mainline branch, rather than 9860 from the fbl_release branch). And naturally, it's server -- 9860 server isn't public at all.

spacefight• 12 years ago

Wow, that site loops heavily in Firefox and blocks 1-3 cores at 100% with the embedded vines...

donkeyd• 12 years ago

Announcing RemoteIE: The only way to safely use IE.

Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android

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