We do most of our testing through cloud-hosted VMs now, like http://browserstack.com and http://saucelabs.com
Sauce also lets you set up selenium/WebDriver testing so you can automate it.
Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
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Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#62The VMs are designed for Virtual PC, which is of course only available for Windows. There's a script called ievms that will automatically downloade those VMs and convert them for use with VirtualBox on OS X or Linux: http://xdissent.github.com/ievms/
Virtual PC isn't supported in Windows 8 and I couldn't get these images working in Hyper-V. They are truly almost an afterthought from Microsoft.
Selling an operating system is an afterthought in Microsoft's attempts to get you to give them money. If only our other incompatibility woes were so blessed with such afterthoughts.
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#63The VMs are designed for Virtual PC, which is of course only available for Windows. There's a script called ievms that will automatically downloade those VMs and convert them for use with VirtualBox on OS X or Linux: http://xdissent.github.com/ievms/
This is the most sane part of all IE testing I've done. Love it.
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Is there a similar option for VMWare, or is the format too different?
Might as well just install VirtualBox, its free afterall. I stopped using VMWare when I had to buy it again for Lion.
VMWare Player is free (AFAIR for non-commercial use, whatever that is)
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#65We do most of our testing through cloud-hosted VMs now, like http://browserstack.com and http://saucelabs.com Sauce also lets you set up selenium/WebDriver testing so you can automate it.
Agreed. Spending hours fiddling around with old VM's to test horrible old browsers sounds depressing.
Saucelabs looks good cheers.
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#66Another alternative is using an application virtualization solution. In that case you can run IE6 directly in Windows 7. It works as a sandbox and you don't nees the whole operating system. My company is providing this technology to Symantec.
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might as well just install VirtualBox, its free afterall. I stopped using VMWare when I had to buy it again for Lion.
VMWare Player is free (AFAIR for non-commercial use, whatever that is)
It's not available on OSX, they provide VMWare Fusion instead, which costs 50 bucks
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#68Apparently (free) VMWare Player can import VMC/VPC files now for those that prefer VMWare.
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#69Why use this instead of the setup that I use for years?: a WinXP virtual machine and this IEs collection: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-run-multiple-internet-explorer-v... - you end up with one VM and IE 3 - 8.
...and since I use Win7 for work I was tempted to try http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage but ended up using my old solution out of fear of messy installs/unistalls that such software could do on my "clean" work OS though I'm curious if anyone tried it as it still seems more comfortable and I'd switch to it if I could...
Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE
#70Just a quick note that one of the easiest ways to get a legitimate license key is to join BizSpark. If you are a startup (which I imagine a lot of people here have some sort of startup) there is no reason not to be a part of it.
One thing I also wanted to add is that BizSpark gives you free Azure platform access...with Windows Server keys! I think it works out to be two "large instances" for a year. I think large is like 2GB ram or so.