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Having been caught out recently when a web site I launched displayed perfectly on IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari on Windows but was corrupted when viewed using Safari on the Mac (by a potential customer), I need to start testing how my sites look when viewed on a Mac.
Problem is, I don't own a Mac.
I've tried BrowsrCamp, which claims to provide VNC access to a Mac with lots of browsers installed, but after finding it unreliable (so far, it's worked 1 day in the last 5) I need another solution.
Any suggestions?
The best site to test website and see them realtime on MAC Safari is by using
Browserstack
They have like 25 free minutes of first time testing and then 10 free mins each day..You can even test your pages from your local PC by using their WEB TUNNEL Feature
I tested 7 to 8 pages in browserstack...And I think they have some java debugging tool in the upper right corner that is great help
For my case (a small, personal project) https://www.lambdatest.com/ was very helpful. Free tier allows for 6 sessions per month.
Meanwhile, MacOS High Sierra can be run in VirtualBox (on a PC) for Free.
It's not really fast but it works for general browser testing.
How to setup see here: https://www.howtogeek.com/289594/how-to-install-macos-sierra-in-virtualbox-on-windows-10/
I'm using this for a while now and it works quite well
You don't have to pay for those online service and still be able to use latest Safari for free with these choices:
A) Install VMware 🧡
Use Google to find VMware + free MacOs ISO image. This solution is significantly faster than VirtualBox.
B) Install VirtualBox and download free MacOS High Sierra image
See tutorial here: https://www.wikigain.com/install-macos-high-sierra-virtualbox-windows/
Use these vbox settings to increase resolution and memory, but it is still very laggy and slow:
cd "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080
VBoxManage modifyvm "macOS" --vram 256
If it's a major concern to start doing a lot of testing on a Mac, then I would definitely suggest buying a second hand Mac, or perhaps building a Hackintosh. The former gets you up and running quickly, the latter gives you a lot of power for the same price.
For just the odd piece of testing, running OS X in VMWare on your current PC is a cheaper option.
Unfortunately you cannot run MacOS X on anything but a genuine Mac.
MacOS X Server however can be run in VMWare. A stopgap solution would be to install it inside a VM. But you should be aware that MacOS X Server and MacOS X are not exactly the same, and your testing is not going to be exactly what the user has. Not to mention the $499 price tag.
Simplest way is to buy yourself a cheap mac mini or a laptop with a broken screen used on ebay, plug it onto your network and access it via VNC to do your testing.
Amazon AWS recently launched macOS EC2 instances.
As of now (Dec 2020) they are pretty pricey, you have to reserve them minimum for 24h.
You can connect to the instance via VNC (sample guide for connecting from Windows) and test your browser.
https://turbo.net/ offers a browser sandbox in which containerised virtual machines run browser sessions for you. I tried it with Safari on my Windows development machine and it seems to work very well.
Litmus may help you. It will take screenshots of your webpage(s) in a wide variety of browsers so you can make sure that your site works in all of them. A free alternative (Litmus is a paid service) is Browsershots, but you do get what you pay for. (In some screenshots that Browershots returns, the browser hasn't yet finished loading the webpage...)
Of course, as other people have suggested, buying a Mac is also a good solution (and may be better, depending on the kind of testing you need to do), because then you can test your website yourself in any of the browsers that run under Mac OS X or Windows.
Related
I have written a JavaFX app running on Windows 10 machine in the office which has problems showing (painting/rendering) certain embedded controls such as a Pane with PdfBox when I connect to it with Remote Desktop for Mac. It shows only a black screen in the app instead of the pdf document.
When I connect using RDP from my Windows 10 machine at home to my Windows 10 machine at work, the app works just fine (the pdf is shown in the app).
I have the same problems using AnyDesk and Teamviewer.
The app only shows PDFs properly using a connection from Windows 10 to Windows 10 with Microsoft RDP.
It might be a JavaFX issue. Similar issues are described here (although not 100% identical):
https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8239589
https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8229394
However, since I guess Microsoft Remote Desktop for Mac is using the same technology as the Windows Desktop client, I would have expected it to work fine.
I have a Mac Mini M1 running the latest OS (Monterey) at the time of writing this post. I am also using the latest Remote Desktop client for Mac.
This problem is not new and was also present in older releases.
I have tried to play around with screen resolutions, both on Host and Client but nothing good came out of those tests.
Disabled also hardware acceleration in Remote Desktop for Mac preferences but it didn't change anything.
The machine at the office has the following specs (which I cannot change nor update)
Edizione Windows 10 Pro
Versione 20H2
Data installazione: 10/09/2021
Build sistema operativo 19042.1415
Esperienza Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3920.0
Anyone else who has seen this problem and perhaps resolved it?
Could it be a bug in either PdfBox or Remote Desktop for Mac?
Except for the above issue, the Remote Desktop Client for Mac is working great (not lagging as TeamViewer or AnyDesk) and the user experience is phenomenal.
PS: While this might be considered a programming question (since I wrote the app with JavaFX) but it might be better to post on another forum? If yes, which one? On the other hand, many similar posts (look at the suggested thread on the right) have been upvoted despite not dealing with programming issues.
Thanks.
How do you use PDFBox? I ask because this is not a JavaFX component. If you use a SwingNode for that it might be interesting to try one of my two PDFViewer demos here and see whether the problem persists.
https://github.com/mipastgt/JFXToolsAndDemos#awtimage
The difference is in how I do the rendering and maybe that makes a difference for your use-case too. But of course this is just a wild guess and I can't promise anything.
This may already have a question somewhere, but I am at a loss as to how to debug IE11 on my Mac.
I currently run a full Win10 instance in a Virtual Box, but it is so bloated that it is nearly impossible to move nimbly between coding and debugging. IE dev-tools are also inaccessible using this method because it just cripples the VM, so I am flying blind with coding.
I have looked up tutorials as to how to run IE on a Mac direct using Wine/Remote Desktop, but these instructions are out of date or the supporting software does not work as intended. Also, Microsoft (being the evil empire that they are) discontinued support for debugging with Azure so that is another option off the table.
If there is anything that actually works without having to shell out $$$ please let me know as it is so painful currently to debug the worst browser that will never die.
From your description, I can see that you had already try to use the Windows 10 VM but it get hangs.
You can try to go to Windows Features on or off inside Control Panel-> Programs-> Programs and Features and try to turn off the features that you are not using may help to reduce the load.
It is possible that you are running your VM in a very less memory that downs the performance of the OS.
If possible for you than try to install a VM with some more memory.
Otherwise you can try to install Windows 7 in your VM and upgrade to IE 11 in that.
It can help you to solve your issue with the OS and you can debug the code on IE 11.
Below are some helpful references that may give you some additional information.
How to test your website with Internet Explorer on a Mac
How to Debug in IE on a Mac
Someone smart who I know just mentioned that the idea of downloading Internet Explorer onto a Mac seems counterintuitive, even though it might make sense to do since Safari seems to have problems on a certain site for a project we're working on. I'm just wondering why this is and would greatly appreciate any clarification. In summary:
Why does it not make sense to download Internet Explorer onto a Mac?
Much thanks in advance!
If you're looking for a serious answer:
The best way to test something with IE7 for Windows is to use IE7 for Windows. Just because you have a Mac doesn't mean you can't do that. You can run Windows through BootCamp. Or buy a used $99 Windows box and borrow the Mac's keyboard/mouse/etc. Of course it's much more convenient, and almost certainly good enough, to run Windows in a VM under OS X via Parallels, VMware, etc. Wine will mostly work, but it can be fiddly to configure, and may crash and/or have visual glitches that don't happen with real Windows; if you really want to get serious about that you may want to look at Crossover.
But the next best way to test IE7 for Windows is actually Opera. Of course in the case of bugs and quirks that are still present in later versions of IE, they'll do a perfect job of emulating IE7, but for bugs that were fixed, that's not a particularly important focus. Opera, on the other hand, works hard to be able to emulate the quirks of all of the important browsers. Make sure to enable IE quirks mode, and set the user agent to pretend to be IE7 for Windows, and you should be golden.
But for the question you actually asked, there is no blanket answer to this that could possibly be correct. There are many reasons it may not make sense to download Internet Explorer onto a Mac, and also many reasons why it might.
You can't run IE for Mac on any modern Mac.
If you have an ancient Mac, and it's running 10.2 or 10.3 rather than 10.4, it already has IE (and if you want to reinstall it, it's part of the OS X install), so there's no reason to download IE.
You also can't legally download IE for Mac from anywhere anymore (except as part of old versions of OS X).
And IE for Mac is actually far less like IE7 for Windows than any modern browser is.
You can't run IE for Windows (or Pocket IE for Windows Mobile) on Mac OS X.
But you can run it under wine.
And you can run it in a virtual machine running Windows.
Except that Windows comes with Internet Explorer, so there's no reason to download it.
Unless your Windows comes with an older version and you want to update it.
And a Mac can run Windows instead of OS X if you want (e.g., via BootCamp).
Same caveats as with a VM.
And there may be other reasons to download it other than running it.
If your Mac has access to a fast internet connection and your Windows box doesn't, you might want to download the installer on the Mac to copy it locally to Windows.
Sometimes you just want to use up internet bandwidth.
Maybe you're testing your download speeds.
Maybe you're about to dump your boyfriend, and first you want to run him $300 over his monthly bandwidth limits.
Someone at Microsoft might find it entertaining when they notice in the logs that you've downloaded IE on a Mac, and it's always nice to bring a smile to a stranger's face.
The last version of Internet Explorer for Macintosh was 5.2, out in 2003. It wouldn't even run on a modern machine. The build is just not compatible.
If you want to try a different browser, both Chrome and Firefox run on OSX.
To run internet explorer on the Mac, you'd need to use some sort virtualization, running Windows either through Boot Camp or Parallels.
I had to do it because I'm developing software and the client wants to have it styled for IE 7 (the version they have on all their machines).
If I had my druthers, I'd run it under virtualization (e.g., VMWare), but I've misplaced my old XP CDs, so I settled for Wine (which works 'okay', but crashes from time-to-time).
I suggest using VirtualBox which would enable you to run MSIE on your Mac directly:
https://www.virtualbox.org/
...and here are the VMs for MSIE 6, 7, 8 and 9:
https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
Good luck!
It's definitely not a good idea to install Internet Explorer for Mac. It simply doesn't work properly as it was discontinued by Microsoft in 2005. However, if you have to use it to view certain websites that will only work in IE, this is the easiest way to download and install it for Mac: http://machow2.com/download-internet-explorer-for-mac/
This question already has answers here:
Is there a IE tester for mac? [closed]
(7 answers)
Closed 10 years ago.
I'm a webmaster that use mac platform to develop. Can someone suggest me the best way to test my website with IExplorer using a Mac? There're some virtualizer such as parallel, crossover, wine and so on, can someone suggest me the best for this purpose?
Or some other workaround is appreciated (i really don't need an entire copy of windows, only to test my websites on IE6 and IE7 using my mac)
First: Look at the question linked to in the comments. If you just need to see what a site looks like, browsershots.org will do the trick. But if you need to fully test and debug, you need Windows. But that can be done too:
Purchase Parallels Desktop
Download free Windows virtual machines directly from Microsoft made specifically for this purpose. You can rename the .exe self-extracting archives .rar instead, and unpack with anything that can extract RAR files
Import the resulting virtual machine image into Parallels, and you're done
Just know that many of the Windows images are huge. You'll need something like 40GB free to download, unpack and convert the Windows Vista and Windows 7 images (once you're done, you can of course toss a bunch of stuff out again)
Edit: Oh, yeah, forgot to mention: The Windows images last about 3 months at a time before they lock down completely, and you have to download a fresh copy. Microsoft obviously isn't giving away fully-fledged Windows copies for free :)
One option is to join MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network subscription) to get access to all Windows versions in all languages etc. You can install those you need in separate Parallels virtual machines (VMWare and virtualbox would work as well).
This allows you to install the exact version some customer happens to have, e.g. certain old Windows Server with certain IE version, etc to replicate the environment for testing and regression testing.
I would say that virtual machine installations are a must so you get the exact complete real thing.
MSDN has different options, "OS only" would be probably enough for this need (I had other needs for Windows development tools as well so got the full MSDN). MSDN has a cost (on the order of $1k/year) but was worth it to get access to everything for development and testing purposes.
PS. The only fun thing was that as a Mac-based UNIX developer I had many versions of Windows and many versions of Linux installed on my MacBook, but only one installation of OSX ;-) Some people also thought it was fun to see a "Mac developer" with "MSDN subscription", but whatever gets the work done, is the way to go.
I need to test a site with a dynamic menu in Mac Firefox, but I'm running in Windows. A simple browsershot.com test won't help; I need to actually use the site.
How can I acquire a method of doing Mac emulation without physically having a Mac? Is there some kind of remote VM product out there?
We use BrowserCam for exactly that.
I realize that the original question asked for a virtual solution, however, as of this time there isn't a legal way to emulate a Mac on non-Apple hardware.
A service like BrowserCam is the best bet if you are entirely opposed to purchasing a Mac. Remote access from BrowserCam is about $400 a year and they have cheaper packages that may suit.
Depending on how often (and on what browsers/platforms) you need to test, you may want to consider purchasing a Mac Mini. A refurbished Mini runs between $500 and $600 and may be cheaper over the long run.
If cross-platform testing is central to your company's business, a full size Intel-based Mac running both OS X and Windows (with Parallels, BootCamp or VMWare) for testing may be a better option.
Check out the OSx86 Project. I've used this before, it works quite well and is pretty easy to understand.