Windows and IE just for testing

[Giles Turnbull]

If you normally use non-Windows computers, but wanted to have an up-to-date copy of Windows and IE to hand for testing purposes - and *just* for testing purposes - what would you do out of these:

- buy a cheapo laptop and leave it just running Windows/IE and just test on it

- run Windows in an emulator (if so, which one?)

- something else?

G

[Andy Buckingham]

If you're approaching this purely form a Web Dev/running IE angle,
Microsoft offer a set of VMs for this primary purpose free of charge:

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

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[Mike Ellis]

I'd go browserstack.com for web testing but might have missed the point.


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[Ian Dickinson]

On my Linux laptop, I use VirtualBox with Win7 as a guest operating
system. Works very nicely, actually, and it's always with me if I need
to do some testing.

Mike - the problem with browserstack is that it doesn't help you debug
javascript. Sometimes, the only way to find out why an app works
everywhere else but fails on IE8 is to run it in the debugger on a
real live running IE. And actually, the IE10-pretending-to-be-IE8
debug environment is actually quite tolerable, although Chrome's
debugger and Firebug are much better.

Ian

[Mike Ellis]

Ah, yeah, good point - thanks!

_____________________________

Mike Ellis 

Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency: http://thirty8.co.uk  

* My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk *

[Richard Osbaldeston]

Virtual machines usually requires licences (ahem). The compatibility testing ones Microsoft send out are licensed, but keep timing out every few months. Then you need to re-download, re-configure networking... a pain. If you've got the right version of Windows 7 (not so sure about 8?) you can use XP mode to get a frame-less XP VirtualPC VM that never time out. I've got IE6 in stasis right there.

One of our major pains is intranets. IE downgrades itself to compat mode for local users (where local is users on same subnet as server). Which means we have to pretty much support IE7 (compat mode) and the standards modes up.

Re: The licencing has anybody ever tried http://www.reactos.org/ ? can it run IE what versions etc... would be interested.

[Ian Dickinson]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 12:46 PM, Richard Osbaldeston <osb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Virtual machines usually requires licences (ahem).

Yup. I got my boss to spring for a Win7 Pro OEM license for £70. In
theory I could have re-used the original Win8 that came with the
laptop, but (a) I don't know how to get MS to recognise that the
license can be legally transferred (I've already wiped the software
from the disk) and (b) Win8 :)

Ian

[Richard Osbaldeston]

That depends if it was a OEM licensed for the laptop (laptop maker) you won't be able to reuse it. It's locked to the particular laptop. But if it was a bought, boxed full copy of Windows you can ring them to transfer unused licences for re-activation.

[Darwin Peltan]

There is a handy script on Github which makes it very easy to set up IE VM's on Linux or a Mac.

https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#overview