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Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

modern.ie

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Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#101

Post by dave1010uk »

guiambros wrote: post #59
dave1010uk wrote: post #57

OK, now I've got a pretty solid IE test setup, how do I go about testing Mac browsers (eg Safari) without a Mac? AFAIK the Mac OS X license says it can't be virtualized under non-Mac hardware. It looks like the only options are to use remote testing services, buy Apple hardware or illegally use Mac on a non-Mac host.

http://browserstack.com ? I'm not affiliated with them or anything. Just started using last weekend and liked it a lot.

I use browserstack a fair bit already (and have used saucelabs in he past). These remote testing services are really great and cover 80% of my testing needs. However what they don't do is let you get a true feel for what it's like for an end user to interact with the site due to the latency. This becomes more apparent with interactive web apps.

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#102

Post by marshray »

wcdolphin wrote: post #90
inthewind wrote: post #63

Classic example of UX nightmare: So I follow the link, I see a button that says get free VMS. I click it. I then can't figure out what I'm meant to do. I stare at some weird quickstart offer. I give up. I come back to HN, and think - how come others have managed to download their images. I go back, I realise that the button just activates a dropdown/rollup (and it's already in the dropdown state, so clicking the butt…

While I see your opinion, I think it is largely confused. That button you pressed is greyed out, as it has already been pressed. Actually, part of the issue is that the original poster provided a deep link into the site, which maintained the user's state, viewing the download flow. The big blue button asking you to "Select desired testing OS" was not obvious?

Took me a second to understand what the two blue dropdowns were for.

To me the "desired [for] testing OS" would refer to the guest OS running IE. "Select host OS" would have made a lot more sense to me.

Or just list the 9 options as links on the page and let me click them like any normal web content.

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#103

Post by marshray »

blahpro wrote: post #16
Tmmrn wrote: post #11

LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx LinuxVirtualBox.part2.rar LinuxVirtualBox.part3.rar LinuxVirtualBox.part4.rar LinuxVirtualBox.part5.rar Why? Why the proprietary rar format? I mean, is there any reason to actually use rar over even "only" xz nowadays or for big downloads, zpaq (lrzip is probably not mainstream enough I guess)? And 1000 megabyte parts? Why?

Although they come from Microsoft, I don't feel enormously comfortable doing this: chmod +x LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx; ./LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx

I'd think you could un-rar them manually.

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#105

Post by dave1010uk »

dave1010uk wrote: post #57

OK, now I've got a pretty solid IE test setup, how do I go about testing Mac browsers (eg Safari) without a Mac? AFAIK the Mac OS X license says it can't be virtualized under non-Mac hardware. It looks like the only options are to use remote testing services, buy Apple hardware or illegally use Mac on a non-Mac host.

Going down the Apple hardware route it looks like a Mac Mini is the cheapest option. Unless the Mac OS X licence doesn't prohibit running it on Apple TV somehow.

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#106

Post by inthewind »

wcdolphin wrote: post #90
inthewind wrote: post #63

Classic example of UX nightmare: So I follow the link, I see a button that says get free VMS. I click it. I then can't figure out what I'm meant to do. I stare at some weird quickstart offer. I give up. I come back to HN, and think - how come others have managed to download their images. I go back, I realise that the button just activates a dropdown/rollup (and it's already in the dropdown state, so clicking the butt…

While I see your opinion, I think it is largely confused. That button you pressed is greyed out, as it has already been pressed. Actually, part of the issue is that the original poster provided a deep link into the site, which maintained the user's state, viewing the download flow. The big blue button asking you to "Select desired testing OS" was not obvious?

The button colour is grey. It doesn't change colour with a state change/hover. The button has a right arrow on it, not a down arrow. Which indicates to me that I'll be leaving the page. It's not obvious it will do a drop down.

Agree that it didn't help that it was a deep link.

(What I neglected to say, was that my first attempt failed also, in my 'reading' web browser. That eschews background images. But that's another issue. So I'd already repasted the link into a different browser before having further issues.)

I get the page now, I just had an issue when I first encountered it.

I actually think the second of my points was the more important - how do you trust the authenticity of the site?

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#107

Post by gilgoomesh »

adamcw wrote: post #76
rednukleus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still can't run OS X on non-Apple hardware can you? I'd love it if they changed that.

No you cannot. They relaxed the EULA to allow virtualization of Mac OS from a Mac OS host, however. You can also use the same licensed copy that acts as the host. The EULA revision came along with 10.8. Prior to that you could virtualize 10.7 Server, but once again, only with Mac OS as the host, and only with another licensed copy.

The revision came with 10.7 (non server).

kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2005793

Prior to that you could only virtualized 10.6 server.

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#108

Post by inthewind »

marshray wrote: post #102
wcdolphin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I see your opinion, I think it is largely confused. That button you pressed is greyed out, as it has already been pressed. Actually, part of the issue is that the original poster provided a deep link into the site, which maintained the user's state, viewing the download flow. The big blue button asking you to "Select desired testing OS" was not obvious?

Took me a second to understand what the two blue dropdowns were for. To me the "desired [for] testing OS" would refer to the guest OS running IE. "Select host OS" would have made a lot more sense to me. Or just list the 9 options as links on the page and let me click them like any normal web content.

Does it say that? It reads 'Select Desired Testing OS', which is an odd phrase. It could read 'Select desired testing (host) OS'. But may aswell just read 'Select host OS', as you suggest. Seems to be a classic case of Microsoft changing terminology, and just confusing everyone further down the line in the process.

You could spell out what a host OS is on a descriptive help text next to the form control.

Also noticed that there's no VMWare option under Linux - why would that be?

Plus the blue font isn't really dark enough to read.

Great to see some md5s though!

Another niggle, which I totally missed the first time is that if you select the wrong option navigate away from the page. And then use the back button - you are back to square one. Which is a good reason why this type of download page just doesn't really work.

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#109

Post by xmodem »

tlrobinson wrote: post #19
blahpro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although they come from Microsoft, I don't feel enormously comfortable doing this: chmod +x LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx; ./LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx

Especially because they're not downloaded over HTTPS...

The URLs look like HTTPS to me?

curl -O "https://az412801.vo.msecnd.net/vhd/IEKitV1_Final/VMWare_Fusi...

Re: Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac

#110

Post by marshray »

inthewind wrote: post #108
marshray wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took me a second to understand what the two blue dropdowns were for. To me the "desired [for] testing OS" would refer to the guest OS running IE. "Select host OS" would have made a lot more sense to me. Or just list the 9 options as links on the page and let me click them like any normal web content.

Does it say that? It reads 'Select Desired Testing OS', which is an odd phrase. It could read 'Select desired testing (host) OS'. But may aswell just read 'Select host OS', as you suggest. Seems to be a classic case of Microsoft changing terminology, and just confusing everyone further down the line in the process. You could spell out what a host OS is on a descriptive help text next to the form control. Also noticed…

Disclosure: I work at MSFT, though not on this.

> It reads 'Select Desired Testing OS', which is an odd phrase.

Right. I read that with the implied [for]. Even still, it's odd.

My workflow is: I already have a host OS. I desire to download a VM image running an OS on which to test my site in IE.

> Seems to be a classic case of Microsoft changing terminology, and just confusing everyone further down the line in the process.

I can't imagine there's any malintent here. Just some website editing by folks who are not immersed in the cross-platform virtualization terminology.

> You could spell out what a host OS is on a descriptive help text next to the form control.

Anyone doing virtualization ought to know what 'host' and 'guest' mean. Just use the standard terms, overexplaining it just confuses it. But that's just my own bias.

> Also noticed that there's no VMWare option under Linux - why would that be?

Probably they just didn't get around to testing that case specifically. The VMware images for other host OSes might work just fine.

> Great to see some md5s though!

Death to MD5! :-) SHA-2-256 FTW. Better yet, GPG and/or Authenticode sigs.

> Another niggle, which I totally missed the first time is that if you select the wrong option navigate away from the page. And then use the back button - you are back to square one. Which is a good reason why this type of download page just doesn't really work.

Flippin' gratuitous Javascript. :-)

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