Microsoft: How to run Internet Explorer 11 on ANDROID, iOS, OS X Microsoft has unveiled a new tool to allow web developers to test their apps against the very latest version of Internet Explorer – even if they don't have any Windows clients running in-house. Web devs use a variety of tools to get their work done, and it should come as no surprise that a great many prefer OS X to Windows. …
Me too here. FF runs for days if not months on all of my computers that run variants of Debian, LMDE. Stable as rock, need to kill it from time time when update is available. Noscript is great help here.
AMOF, on my old HTC Incredible running customized KitKat ROM ff with overfilled /data/data partition and apps can only be installed on sdcard from adb, firefox+noscript is pretty stable and smooth. Noscript is in beta here.
IE 11 running on a Surface Pro 3 here hangs or crashes randomly -- about 3-4 times a week, or multiple times daily if running a flash game. This is even on sites like msn.com that I would expect to be perfect in IE... I haven't tried FF on this machine (it's IT managed) but on my own machines FF rarely crashes on me.
Not 4.7 - you might be thinking of Netscape communicator. It was that pain called IE 5.5. It didn't render anything like the windows version - partly down to System 9's controls (buttons, forms, etc) being different than windows, and partly who knows what.
I'm very glad that one never flew much further from the cuckoo's nest
Closer, no cigar. IE 5.5 was a windows version of IE.
You are thinking of IE 5.1 (OS 7/8/9) and IE 5.2 (OS X). 5.1 often didn't render things at all like windows, the spec or even common sense. 5.2 was slightly better in terms of rendering, but both were dog slow at any kind of JS.
"Microsoft released the final version for Mac OS X, version 5.2.3 and a month later on July 11, they released the final version for Mac OS 8 and 9, version 5.1.7." wiki agrees.
I stopped using IE in OS X 10.2, Firefox has always been a better choice with ABP, NoScript and Blur on.
Bulletproof by comparison.
So... you get access to just IE11 (the one that causes the least compatibility problems) over RDP, and you can only access sites that are open to the world (ie, live or almost live).
Apart from testing what desktop IE11 looks like over a remote connection without GPU support, what exactly is the purpose of this?
I think you're missing the point.
Cross platform without local installation is what MS is offering.
The chance to surf wherever you want no matter what local rights you have on your PC, no matter your skill level and no chance to get hit by a drive-by. I've been thinking about doing this for our users - creating an airgap for the browser. Malware immediately becomes less dangerous.
And I'm a Chrome user.
If what they're trying to do is create an air gap, all well and good, but for testing web sites for IE compatibility this has no benefit whatsoever.
As I've found out from many years of pain, if you need to support IE8 on windows XP, you test IE8 on windows XP. Not IE10 in IE8 quirks mode, not IE8 on windows 7, and certainly not some kind of online tool where you have no idea what environment it's running on. most browser-specific code in my applications is to work around browser bugs in specific environments, and you don't find that out with an emulator
From my completely unscientific sample of my malware-afflicted customers, Google Chrome seems to suffer increasingly from dodgy extensions that require a Chrome reinstall following deletion of the Google folder in appData. Internet Explorer also suffers from malware extensions that cannot be disabled except by removing the offending entries from the registry. So I'm now installing Opera Chromium in the hope of better security, if only from the fact that less people use it.
The chance to surf wherever you want no matter what local rights you have on your PC, no matter your skill level and no chance to get hit by a drive-by. I've been thinking about doing this for our users - creating an airgap for the browser. Malware immediately becomes less dangerous.
Firstly, I can surf where I want, when I want, and I don't need a cloud based browser to do it.
Secondly, given that I saw a story about Azure outages on the same page as the link to this article... well, you get the idea.
As for the idea that malware becomes less dangerous, I suspect that this would be a short term condition, if indeed it is true.
Didn't you hear? When you can deploy instantly, you don't need to test anymore. Just unit-test your scripts, and fix bugs as users report them.
A friend works for a company making and selling a class of online software engineering tool (I won't say what class of tool, but it's not testing), and they do not formally test any of their web backend code. My friend, who does mobile client dev, thought they were joking with him when they said this, but no, they just run the backend in constant firefighting mode.
And then, when the backend fix breaks the iOS client, they don't understand why users are annoyed that they've no service for a week while Apple approves the updated client...
If you look on that same page, you'll find they offer VM images of Windows XP-8.1, with all the different versions of IE, for free, and yes, they have Virtualbox images as well as HyperV.
So unless you're using a really underpowered/old machine you should be able to run that on your linux desktop.
Every such session here is destroyed on completion whether it's a walk-about on the darknet or just testing against browser+OS combinations. Been doing that since the first betas of VMware workstation some fifteen years ago. Did the same with Microsoft when the tentatively put their toes in the water. You need this if you're halfway serious about testing, especially against IT required system baselines for a firm. Unless you like cluttering up the lab with spare rigs. (Not that I've got anything against having a literal ton of hardware laying about. I do!)
I see what Microsoft is doing here as their usual practice of taking a temperature reading to see if their is demand for a remote testing service in Azure. They can ramp up doing the same for Linux in a heartbeat. (And a replacement for TechNet. Perhaps.)
Why can't they make IE a stand-alone product like every other browser manages? I thought they had got to the point with a GUI-less Windows Server that this was now possible (or at least, not *essential* for Windows to run), so why don't they?
How hard could it be for a multi-billion dollar company to make their software cross-platform like all other seem to manage on a fraction of the budget?
Using Microsoft Remote Desktop from a Mac to connect to the supplied IE11 test app, a quick trip to http://www.whatismybrowser.com/are-cookies-enabled confirms that cookies aren't enabled. Selecting 'Internet options' behind the gear icon does exactly nothing. If I go to Safety -> Webpage privacy policy... then I get a screen that confirms that cookies are disabled. Any attempt to enable cookies in the dialogue that sits below that has no effect.
I confirmed this behaviour by testing against standard, trusted sites like LinkedIn and Gmail.
So, ummm, not all that useful for testing actually, Microsoft.
Why is anyone talking about IE on anything but Windows. Then the only conversation is which 1+ GB resource sucking browser sucks less resources. Chome, which attempts to disguise total RAM suck by having 100+ processes running, or FF which will gladly show the 2GB it sucks down.
How about a feature to flush all the shit down the drain that is no longer in use.
OH, you'll find out tomorrow why IE should die. From IE6 to whatever Windows 9+1 is running.
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