I develop web applications on a Mac, so I can test the standard Mac browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc). But I'm wondering what is the accepted way for testing Windows browsers and especially IE? How does one test different versions of IE?
Some possible solutions I can think of:
Dual boot - This seems like a pain if you are developing code in a Mac environment, but want to test in Windows.
Windows virtual machine - This has always sent my laptop fan haywire and caused general slowness
Buy a Windows laptop - This certainly works, but is a cost I'm not in the mood to pay for just a test machine.
Something else I'm missing?
I'm not looking for an absolute right or wrong answer here, I'm just curious what other developers do, and if there's any accepted practice.
Another option, if you can run Virtual PC or have a virtualization application that can use VPC virtual hard drives, is to download the IE Application Compatibility vhds from Microsoft.
Adobe BrowserLab
Easiest way is virtual machines that contain their separate versions of IE since you can not easily have multiple versions of IE running with the update to IE8.
If you want to do automated stuff, you always can use Selenium Web Driver
virtual box looks like a good option... except you need to get a hold of a windows os.
apparently there is also something called winebottler... check out this other post from stack overflow for more details.
Is there a IE tester for mac?
IE tester is a not a bad option, allowing you to switch between different versions of IE at the click-of-a-mouse. It's not perfect, there are a few things it wont mimic exactly, but if you're on a budget it's great (and free). But of course you will need access to a windows box. Beg/borrow/steal one? To be honest, if you're doing a lot of web dev, you should have access to a machine for testing.
The alternative is to use an online rendering service, but that will cost you.
Related
A company I applied to had sent me a "test", which I had to decline, due to it not making a lot of sense: They asked me to use Selenium to test a Win desktop app GUI and produce bug reports in the table form. They claimed that they're using Selenium to test Win desktop applications in their company, but they wouldn't tell how.
I did some research, and my understanding is that Selenium works with web browsers only, as it's been specifically designed for this. How can it connect to Windows desktop app? I just don't see any way possible for this. I found a claim that some integrate it with another open source tool to do this, but this "test" was supposed to take 1 hour of my time and installing some other framework, configuring, integrating with Selenium, etc, etc definitely wouldn't fall into one hour time frame. I had heard from another company too, that they wanted me to use Selenium to automate non-browser stuff if they hired me... Still have no clue about this--is this even possible? -- or is it something simply wrong?
You can't. Selenium can only automate web browsers, and even then, only certain browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and occasionally Safari). It interacts with them at a very deep level, very specific to the browser in question, in ways that don't apply to other Windows applications.
Selenium is meant for GUI tests of web applications and nothing else. But you can include Sikuli in webdriver code and can test the any of the applications either desktop or web applications, since it uses Image recognition.
else if you want to test the desktop application using Selenium thne u need to import Autoit and can test those as well
I'm at my wits end right now trying to get a website working in IE7-9, the issue I'm having is getting text-shadow to appear in a decent matter. I've been using the 960 grid system so changes are very minimum, I've been checking changes with IE Netrender. However lately IE Netrender has been having issues so I can't test the layout in a timely fashion.
I did have VM Ware set up but I'm really tired of reactivating my Windows copy and installing a separate image for each version of the browser. I don't have Windows 7 for IE9 as well. I'm looking for a free option. I've tried searching but everything seems outdated.
So my question is, how does everyone test their site for IE7-9?
The IE Developer Tools let you set IE7 and IE8 modes on IE9, so you can get 98% testing with one version.
There are some issues that don't crop up there though, so its a good idea to do a quick real browser check at the end.
MS has free VMs you can download with the different versions of IE on them. I'm not sure if you can run them on a Mac though.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575
By having a Windows license. Perhaps not the answer you're looking for, but there's no such thing as a free meal. The only truly guaranteed method of testing a site in Internet Explorer is to actually use it in Internet Explorer, be it in a virtual machine or on a real PC. Spoon used to have an Internet Explorer virtualization web app, but that has since been removed at Microsoft's behest.
I've recently started using watir-webdriver and so far am a big fan. However I need to be able to test Safari too, and I don't have access to a mac to be able to use Safari-Watir.
Does anyone know a good alternative to use for testing Safari on a windows machine? (In Ruby of course)
Thanks
(important, see UPDATE below)
the Selenium Webdriver folks are apparently waiting for something from Apple in order to support safari. I would not hold your breath.
Apple does have a version of Safari for the PC, I'm not sure how good the current version is, the initial releases were.. um, well, lets just say they had issues (lots of issues)
Personally (mostly for security reasons) I would not run it nor recommend anyone use it for any purpose other than downloading Chrome or Firefox. But unfortunately a lot of apple users use it because it's what came with their systems, which means to the extent apple users are part of your target market, you have to test on it.
For the moment that means you'll need to use Safariwatir, which has not as far as I can tell had an update for a year or more.
the current state of support on both the Selenium/Webdriver side and the Safariwatir side was discussed recently in this thread in the watir general group on google
UPDATE
Webdriver now has Safari support, which makes direct support of safari (I think on a mac only at this point) possible. See http://watirmelon.com/2012/04/17/using-watir-webdriver-with-safari-at-last/ for more info.. still a bit DYI but I'm sure it will get more accessable soon.
Mike, seems this is available now. Alister Scott wrote up some instructions on his blog Using Watir-Webdriver with Safari At Last
Unfortunately this still a bit DYI because you have to build your own safari extension, which requires getting certificates and such from apple, and I'm not sure if you can create the right environment to build that stuff on anything other than a mac.
I have an application for Windows Phone 7 that I need to bundle up and send to several doctors for a content review. Ideas on how this might be done? I can't expect the docs to install the full SDK, but if I could bundle the emulator with it that might work, or if there's an easy way to convert the app to a Windows EXE that would as well. All suggestions welcomed!
While the theory is that since it's SIlverlight it should just run on the desktop. Years of Compact Framework development have taught me that this theory is almost never correct and getting it to work is often a real chore.
Microsoft has not yet delivered a stand-along WinPhone emulator (no idea if they will, but they did for WinMo) so for now that option is off the table. Getting your end user to install the stand-alone emulator is a fair bit of work anyway.
To be honest, my experience has been that just doing a Camtasia capture of the developer screen while you step through the app is one of the easiest ways to get ideas across to these types of groups. No, the end result isn't interactive, so they can't clock on buttons themselves, but if you walk through the feature they want to see, you can usually answer 95% of the questions this way.
When you need to address that other 5%, my experience has been that it's easiest to just send them a physical device with the app installed.
If they are (or have ready access to someone who is) fairly tech-savvy, shipping a Virtual PC image of a PC with the emulator installed and the app installed on it sometimes works.
Dot NET code using MS libraries is partially upwards compatible and most runtime classes present on a mobile device are also available on desktop Windows (see MSDN docs for details). So create a copy of your source code, ask visual studio to create a desktop .exe from it, it'll tell you it can't for several reasons, and you will need to recode some sections of it, resize the frame window etc. to make it work.
If one is careful about what methods one uses, I have managed to actually use the exact same .EXE file on the desktop without problems!
You simply cannot present the application without the SDK, since Windows Phone 7 applications rely on a completely different subset of .NET Framework and require an emulator to run XAP packages. Although you might say that it's the same Silverlight, don't forget about Microsoft.Phone and derivatives - you need the SDK in order for those libraries to be properly handled.
Also, you cannot convert a WP7 application to a Windows executable due to difference in platform architectures.
What you could do is simply allow the doctors to test your application through TeamViewer or similar products.
i think a "killer app" for winphone7+silverlight would be a desktop browser based emulator. want to try the app? just have the store run the emulator in the browser. (yeah, lots of technical hurdles, limited multitouch etc, but it would be pretty slick!)
In developing a number of WP7 apps, I have a need to show clients how the app will be when deployed. The clients are a) not in the same location as I am, b) not technical at all, and c) may not even be using a PC. The purpose is to demo, get feedback and make any needed changes.
I'm not finding any realistic options to just simply show them what it would look, feel and run on a Windows Phone 7 (using the ApplicationBar, etc.). I found this link - http://www.redmondpie.com/standalone-windows-phone-7-series-emulator-9140536/ - but it's rather hacky for me to ask someone to do to set up an emulator on their machine without also installing VS Express, etc.
Does anyone know of any links to an official emulator that can be run on a PC, has a simple install and can load WP7 apps?
Have you considered using a product such as Citrix GoTo. Clients do not need to be particularly technical to join such a meeting, you can then take them through a demo. This will cost you though.
A free alternative would be to set aside a PC running the emulator with your software loaded. Create a VPN for you clients to connect to and let them use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to the PC. They can then play around with it remotely.
Have you considered using SketchFlow? Although by default the UI is "sketchy" (sorry), you can apply styles to the controls you drop on your pages, including the very same styles that are used by Windows Phone controls.
If you use a Silverlight SketchFlow project, you can deploy the content to a web server and provide a link that can be consumed on any machine that will render Silverlight content...they can go through the navigation, provide feedback, etc.
Christian Schormann has a writeup on what is required to use it in the pre-release tools... http://electricbeach.org/?p=573
You should take a look at this: http://justinangel.net/WindowsPhone7EmulatorAutomation. I believe it will answer your question exactly.