7 ms·

Testing made easier in Internet Explorer

119 points by bahularora 14y ago

stephenr 14y ago
They offer a 3 month trial of BrowserStack (who also have a free trial, but presumably its less than 3 months?) but it requires Facebook login. When I tweeted to @ie to ask why this is the case, @browserstack replied saying "Just a way to manage sign-ups especially duplicate". How is it possible that companies like Microsoft and Browserstack, both of whom have existing "signup" functionality, and one of whom already operates an "online profile" system, require Facebook for a trial like this?
- technotarek 14y ago
  Yes, their response sounds like evasion. Nothing is free. Having said that, their service is pretty good (based on the original 30 minute 'free trial').
- eli 14y ago
  Because it's a pain to set up a new Facebook profile. Presumably enough of a pain that people won't be willing to do it every 3 months to avoid paying for BrowserStack.
  - dmethvin 14y ago
    I'd assume that as well. I have collected several Microsoft IDs by way of Hotmail/live.com/outlook.com but I only have one Facebook account.
  - stephenr 14y ago
    Not that much of a pain if you don't need to develop apps with it.
- justnorris 14y ago
  So what ? I'll enjoy my 3 months free trial anyway. Since when is "Login with Facebook" a bad thing ?
  - stephenr 14y ago
    It's the only option they support. Some people choose to have no association with Facebook, for a variety of reasons (usually privacy related) - and now Microsoft says "hey that Microsoft ID we made you create for all our other services, it doesn't work here!"
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  I don't have a Facebook account, so while I think the concept of Browser Stack is awesome, I'm going to skip this entirely since setting up a Facebook account just to use it pisses me off...
  - hessenwolf 14y ago
    I didn't sign up to instagram and spotify last weekend because they seemed to want my facebook details. No, I do not want my music taste and photographs automatically shared with a random selection of friends, strangers, and businesses. There is a slight difference between who I am and who I want other people to think I am.
    - bahularora 14y ago
      I think you can change app feed settings to "only me" then only you can see the feeds.
      - hessenwolf 14y ago
        Oh, I can change them, for sure. And then they can change them without telling me, and share everything anyway. Imagine my surprise at finding out that youtube was sharing my history. Along with my mostly technical interests, there was fails and a specific interest in philology!
  - charonn0 14y ago
    This sort of thing pisses me off too. Until/unless a widely-adopted global user uniqueness authentication system is developed[1], we'll continue to see web properties use third-parties to provide a semblance of this utility. For the moment, Facebook is rapidly cornering the market. Which is too bad, in my opinion. [1]: Random Idea: Maybe ISPs can start issuing randomly-generated cryptographic key pairs along with an IP address. This way, a particular IP + public key would be distinguishable from the next user who gets that IP address, but would not be traceable to a particular customer (not any more so than an IP by itself), and would be used only until the customer requests a new IP. The key would provide IP address authentication ("this IP has not been assigned to someone new since the public key is the same as before.") This would all happen transparently beneath the application layer (perhaps as an extension to TCP), so existing app-layer protocols could use it OotB. Other handy features might include detecting if a machine with a static IP has had its connection interrupted since your last visit. Each keypair could be signed using the ISP's own private key as a protection against being spoofed. Customers would be asked to choose some sort of password/phrase/favorite number/etc. as part of their service signup, which would then be used by the ISP as part of the seed for keygen system.
unwind 14y ago
Could someone please edit the title? It seems a bit on the overly redundant side, with the domain two times (three with HN's mention). Thanks.
slig 14y ago
> VMs for Mac and Linux coming soon. So you don't have to bother visiting that page.
nailer 14y ago
Biggest announcement for me and most people I know is: 'VMs for Mac and Linux coming soon.*' On this page: http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools Ie, no more screwing around with IEVMS and conversion scripts etc when trying to get a working copy of IE. Alas latency makes Browserstack unusable for a lot of people.
- dave1010uk 14y ago
  If you don't already, try this IE VM automated installation script: https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
  - taf2 14y ago
    when it works, it works great. I always get the checksum failure messages, or errors in unrar returning a non 0 status code... eventually after multiple attempts of rm -rf ~/.ievms and re-running the script will "sometimes" eventually work... it is the best option i know of for sure, but still not as easy as at least never been easy for me here...
    - xdissent 14y ago
      https://github.com/xdissent/ievms/issues/new https://github.com/xdissent/ievms/issues/new ;-)
  - ph0rque 14y ago
    I've deleted it because 50 gigs for testing IE7 - 9 is a bit too much for my 120 gig SSD drive.
    - Groxx 14y ago
      In case you didn't know, it keeps the original download around after install (and maybe other files - it has been a while since I used it). Deleting those will free up quite a bit of room.
tokenizer 14y ago
Soooo no new tools released. Just a marketing Web Site for IE10. I was so excited for a great application to test with.
- mxxx 14y ago
  Yep, all this stuff was already available. We've been using BrowserStack for ages and the VMs have been available from MS for a long time. All they've done here is package it up in a shiny looking website that's basically begging developers not to forget about IE now that everybody writes for webkit & mozilla.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
shanelja 14y ago
Just took a look at this in my lunch break, sent it to the QA team and we love it! Expecting it to get passed to the boss to check if it will be a purchase soon.
zachinglis 14y ago
Let's not forget Mogotest.com I've used both Browserstack and Mogotest on and off the past few years and I have to admit its invaluable.
- smagch 14y ago
  Does anyone use testling.com? http://testling.com/ http://testling.com/
lowglow 14y ago
It's almost as if microsoft has a 5 year lag on processing developer complaints.
systemtrigger 14y ago
And now we learn the true reason MS ignored W3C all those years: To make money. Step 1: get people to use obsolete software. Step 2: license support.
tiredoffps 14y ago
As a designer, I can't really use this. It misses some of the minor design details that I can see in a real IE8 browser. It's like looking at your jpegs at 40% compression in Photoshop.
- sirius87 14y ago
  i felt this was a major issue. then i noticed the high quality setting in BrowserStack. with high quality set, sites look great!
xauronx 14y ago
I connected my facebook, put in the URL for my site and hit "Test"... and it took me to another registration page. Awesome.
d0m 14y ago
Wow, Microsoft clearly gained a couple of points back for me. First, beautifully designed page. Second, partnering with a cool company rather than staying Microsoft-only-product. Third, Agreeing that old browsers are a pain to deal with and providing solutions for devs. Fourth, Agreeing that there are other OS!
- ozh 14y ago
  First, instead of fixing their stupid browser so it works like all the others, they provide "tools" to ask that you make your sites compliant with their stuff Second, my site uses jQuery UI 1.10 and they suggest I update to 1.9. Regarding web browsers, Microsoft is still sucking balls, year after year.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
thawt 14y ago
Unless something has changed. Don't these VMs expire ... and require a redownload / setup after a few months? Nothing to see here.
bartsitekcom 14y ago
Personally I like the IETester: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage Unfortunately, it runs just under Windows.
abdophoto 14y ago
Never thought I'd say this but thank you Microsoft.
Johnyma22 14y ago
Nope. Nice try, but doesn't work.
robomartin 14y ago
OK, maybe someone can explain. Have I been doing it wrong? I have minimal Windows VMs built on VMWare to test with everything from ie6 to ie9 and a Windows 8 VM to test ie10. Same for Windows Safari and Firefox. With VMWare's workstation software you, effectively, get one browser per tab (well, one vm per tab) and testing is dead simple. This wasn't so hard to setup at all. I can even remote-desktop into the machine hosting the VM's and test from another machine. The only cost were the Windows licenses, but we use Windows already, so that wasn't too bad. Why would one want to pay to use these services, particularly when, if I understand it correctly, they offer static images of each browser as opposed to a real-time interaction?
- Groxx 14y ago
  Design teams that aren't techy enough for VMs, OSes that don't support emulating X (ie, Windows users wanting to test their mobile site on an iOS device), and testing a large number of variations come to mind. For instance, how long (and how much HD space!) would it take you to set up emulators for all these? http://www.browserstack.com/list-of-browsers-and-platforms http://www.browserstack.com/list-of-browsers-and-platforms (note that these are in-your-browser remote desktop sessions, essentially. some services are static images, like BrowserShots.org, some are not) For most people, I totally agree, especially with e.g. the IEVMS script. Pretty simple, low cost, and it probably covers all the variety you need, since it's not too hard to install multiple versions of Firefox and Chrome on most OSes. But exceptions exist, and I'd be willing to bet they're relatively large (absolute) numbers.

119 points by bahularora 14y ago

They offer a 3 month trial of BrowserStack (who also have a free trial, but presumably its less than 3 months?) but it requires Facebook login. When I tweeted to @ie to ask why this is the case, @browserstack replied saying "Just a way to manage sign-ups especially duplicate". How is it possible that companies like Microsoft and Browserstack, both of whom have existing "signup" functionality, and one of whom already operates an "online profile" system, require Facebook for a trial like this?

technotarek 14y ago
Yes, their response sounds like evasion. Nothing is free. Having said that, their service is pretty good (based on the original 30 minute 'free trial').
eli 14y ago
Because it's a pain to set up a new Facebook profile. Presumably enough of a pain that people won't be willing to do it every 3 months to avoid paying for BrowserStack.
- dmethvin 14y ago
  I'd assume that as well. I have collected several Microsoft IDs by way of Hotmail/live.com/outlook.com but I only have one Facebook account.
- stephenr 14y ago
  Not that much of a pain if you don't need to develop apps with it.
justnorris 14y ago
So what ? I'll enjoy my 3 months free trial anyway. Since when is "Login with Facebook" a bad thing ?
- stephenr 14y ago
  It's the only option they support. Some people choose to have no association with Facebook, for a variety of reasons (usually privacy related) - and now Microsoft says "hey that Microsoft ID we made you create for all our other services, it doesn't work here!"
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
I don't have a Facebook account, so while I think the concept of Browser Stack is awesome, I'm going to skip this entirely since setting up a Facebook account just to use it pisses me off...
- hessenwolf 14y ago
  I didn't sign up to instagram and spotify last weekend because they seemed to want my facebook details. No, I do not want my music taste and photographs automatically shared with a random selection of friends, strangers, and businesses. There is a slight difference between who I am and who I want other people to think I am.
  - bahularora 14y ago
    I think you can change app feed settings to "only me" then only you can see the feeds.
    - hessenwolf 14y ago
      Oh, I can change them, for sure. And then they can change them without telling me, and share everything anyway. Imagine my surprise at finding out that youtube was sharing my history. Along with my mostly technical interests, there was fails and a specific interest in philology!
- charonn0 14y ago
  This sort of thing pisses me off too. Until/unless a widely-adopted global user uniqueness authentication system is developed[1], we'll continue to see web properties use third-parties to provide a semblance of this utility. For the moment, Facebook is rapidly cornering the market. Which is too bad, in my opinion. [1]: Random Idea: Maybe ISPs can start issuing randomly-generated cryptographic key pairs along with an IP address. This way, a particular IP + public key would be distinguishable from the next user who gets that IP address, but would not be traceable to a particular customer (not any more so than an IP by itself), and would be used only until the customer requests a new IP. The key would provide IP address authentication ("this IP has not been assigned to someone new since the public key is the same as before.") This would all happen transparently beneath the application layer (perhaps as an extension to TCP), so existing app-layer protocols could use it OotB. Other handy features might include detecting if a machine with a static IP has had its connection interrupted since your last visit. Each keypair could be signed using the ISP's own private key as a protection against being spoofed. Customers would be asked to choose some sort of password/phrase/favorite number/etc. as part of their service signup, which would then be used by the ISP as part of the seed for keygen system.

unwind 14y ago

Could someone please edit the title? It seems a bit on the overly redundant side, with the domain two times (three with HN's mention). Thanks.

slig 14y ago

> VMs for Mac and Linux coming soon. So you don't have to bother visiting that page.

nailer 14y ago

Biggest announcement for me and most people I know is: 'VMs for Mac and Linux coming soon.*' On this page: http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools http://www.modern.ie/virtualization-tools Ie, no more screwing around with IEVMS and conversion scripts etc when trying to get a working copy of IE. Alas latency makes Browserstack unusable for a lot of people.

dave1010uk 14y ago
If you don't already, try this IE VM automated installation script: https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
- taf2 14y ago
  when it works, it works great. I always get the checksum failure messages, or errors in unrar returning a non 0 status code... eventually after multiple attempts of rm -rf ~/.ievms and re-running the script will "sometimes" eventually work... it is the best option i know of for sure, but still not as easy as at least never been easy for me here...
  - xdissent 14y ago
    https://github.com/xdissent/ievms/issues/new https://github.com/xdissent/ievms/issues/new ;-)
- ph0rque 14y ago
  I've deleted it because 50 gigs for testing IE7 - 9 is a bit too much for my 120 gig SSD drive.
  - Groxx 14y ago
    In case you didn't know, it keeps the original download around after install (and maybe other files - it has been a while since I used it). Deleting those will free up quite a bit of room.

tokenizer 14y ago

Soooo no new tools released. Just a marketing Web Site for IE10. I was so excited for a great application to test with.

mxxx 14y ago
Yep, all this stuff was already available. We've been using BrowserStack for ages and the VMs have been available from MS for a long time. All they've done here is package it up in a shiny looking website that's basically begging developers not to forget about IE now that everybody writes for webkit & mozilla.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

shanelja 14y ago

Just took a look at this in my lunch break, sent it to the QA team and we love it! Expecting it to get passed to the boss to check if it will be a purchase soon.

zachinglis 14y ago

Let's not forget Mogotest.com I've used both Browserstack and Mogotest on and off the past few years and I have to admit its invaluable.

smagch 14y ago
Does anyone use testling.com? http://testling.com/ http://testling.com/

lowglow 14y ago

It's almost as if microsoft has a 5 year lag on processing developer complaints.

systemtrigger 14y ago

And now we learn the true reason MS ignored W3C all those years: To make money. Step 1: get people to use obsolete software. Step 2: license support.

tiredoffps 14y ago

As a designer, I can't really use this. It misses some of the minor design details that I can see in a real IE8 browser. It's like looking at your jpegs at 40% compression in Photoshop.

sirius87 14y ago
i felt this was a major issue. then i noticed the high quality setting in BrowserStack. with high quality set, sites look great!

xauronx 14y ago

I connected my facebook, put in the URL for my site and hit "Test"... and it took me to another registration page. Awesome.

d0m 14y ago

Wow, Microsoft clearly gained a couple of points back for me. First, beautifully designed page. Second, partnering with a cool company rather than staying Microsoft-only-product. Third, Agreeing that old browsers are a pain to deal with and providing solutions for devs. Fourth, Agreeing that there are other OS!

ozh 14y ago
First, instead of fixing their stupid browser so it works like all the others, they provide "tools" to ask that you make your sites compliant with their stuff Second, my site uses jQuery UI 1.10 and they suggest I update to 1.9. Regarding web browsers, Microsoft is still sucking balls, year after year.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

thawt 14y ago

Unless something has changed. Don't these VMs expire ... and require a redownload / setup after a few months? Nothing to see here.

bartsitekcom 14y ago

Personally I like the IETester: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage Unfortunately, it runs just under Windows.

abdophoto 14y ago

Never thought I'd say this but thank you Microsoft.

Johnyma22 14y ago

Nope. Nice try, but doesn't work.

robomartin 14y ago

OK, maybe someone can explain. Have I been doing it wrong? I have minimal Windows VMs built on VMWare to test with everything from ie6 to ie9 and a Windows 8 VM to test ie10. Same for Windows Safari and Firefox. With VMWare's workstation software you, effectively, get one browser per tab (well, one vm per tab) and testing is dead simple. This wasn't so hard to setup at all. I can even remote-desktop into the machine hosting the VM's and test from another machine. The only cost were the Windows licenses, but we use Windows already, so that wasn't too bad. Why would one want to pay to use these services, particularly when, if I understand it correctly, they offer static images of each browser as opposed to a real-time interaction?

Groxx 14y ago
Design teams that aren't techy enough for VMs, OSes that don't support emulating X (ie, Windows users wanting to test their mobile site on an iOS device), and testing a large number of variations come to mind. For instance, how long (and how much HD space!) would it take you to set up emulators for all these? http://www.browserstack.com/list-of-browsers-and-platforms http://www.browserstack.com/list-of-browsers-and-platforms (note that these are in-your-browser remote desktop sessions, essentially. some services are static images, like BrowserShots.org, some are not) For most people, I totally agree, especially with e.g. the IEVMS script. Pretty simple, low cost, and it probably covers all the variety you need, since it's not too hard to install multiple versions of Firefox and Chrome on most OSes. But exceptions exist, and I'd be willing to bet they're relatively large (absolute) numbers.