
Announcing RemoteIE: Test the Latest IE on Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android - robin_reala
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/11/02/announcing-remoteie-test-the-latest-ie-on-windows-mac-os-x-ios-and-android.aspx
======
acdha
A great idea but it exposes a lot of rough edges in Azure:

1\. The Microsoft Remote Desktop Mac app is a UI trainwreck – not just wasted
space and odd keyboard shortcuts but things like the Azure login process
disabling password managers and the one-time auth code via SMS service never
arriving.

2\. Azure's federated Live.com logins are broken, cycling between the login
page and the console hitting you with a “You have logged out elsewhere”

3\. In US East, US West, Southeast Asia and East Asia, connections hang (20+
minutes) at “Please wait for the User Profile Service”

I'm really looking forward to trying this service when Azure is more stable
and, hopefully, they add older versions of IE.

~~~
molant
Hi acdha, 1\. You can go to [http://feedback.azure.com/forums/247748-azure-
remoteapp](http://feedback.azure.com/forums/247748-azure-remoteapp) and share
your feedback with the Remote App team. They really want to make it as useful
as possible and it is still on Preview so now is the moment to influence the
team 3\. Yes, we are working on it and should be fixed soon. Regarding the
older versions of IE, unfortunately we are running on top of Server 2012 so we
are locked to IE11+. At this moment you can use the dev tools and change the
compat mode and we are thinking about adding Enterprise Mode to the service so
you can test on "IE8".

~~~
acdha
Are bugs related to Remote Desktop performance best reported against the
client or Remote App? It doesn't appear to support bitblts so simply moving a
window is extremely jerky and things like CSS transitions are basically a
slideshow.

Enterprise Mode would be useful since that's getting a bit of traction as an
alternative to staying mired in IE8.

~~~
molant
There is no GPU acceleration. When running IE through RDP we default to
software rendering and unfortunately there isn't anything we can do about that
:(

~~~
acdha
Not even old-school acceleration like we used to have in the 90s? I thought
RDP used to at least support things like "move this rectangle to a new
position" for the performance win over things like VNC.

------
13
I'm not sure I'm getting the feel for this at all. It's almost as if it's
targeted at reducing friction for people to test with internet explorer, but
you need a Microsoft account to use it, you are limited to VNC speeds, and you
need to expose a webserver to the internet with your test service on it.
There's not many situations I can think of that this would be useful,
especially if it's something finicky like scrolling performance that needs
debugging.

On the other hand, Microsoft offers a bunch of freely downloadable virtual
machines with every version of Internet Explorer you could care to test in[1].
Why would anybody in the world want to use this particular product for testing
over the alternative?

[1]: [https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-
tools#downloads](https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads)

~~~
smacktoward
Because the alternative (the downloadable VMs) is a gigantic, unbelievable
pain in the ass.

1) You have to download a _complete system image_ of a machine running the
specific versions of Windows and IE you're interested in testing against.
_Each_ of these images can require downloading up to 4 DVDs worth of data just
to get it bootstrapped, which can take forever even on a fast pipe.

2) Want to test against a _different_ version of Windows, or IE, or both? Now
you get to download _4 more DVDs_ , all over again! (Yep, if you started
testing, say, IE9 on Windows 7, and now you want to test against IE10, you
have to download a whole new virtual machine from scratch.)

3) For reasons known only to Microsoft, they don't distribute the VM images as
unified packages; instead, they're a bunch of DVD-size RAR files that have to
be _assembled_ into a complete VM image after downloading. One of those RARs
get corrupted en route? Back to downloading!

4) _RAR files?_ In _2014?_ For serious? Yes, RAR files, for serious.

5) Now you've made it through the epic download, assembled your VM image, and
are ready to get started. Hey, guess what! Microsoft is so paranoid about the
chance that you're an Evil Pirate™ rather than a legitimate developer that
they put a special surprise in the VM, just for you: when it reaches the end
of the calendar quarter, the VM _self-destructs._ Yes, you read that right --
after all that, this VM that you marched through Hell to put together becomes
useless after three months at most. So at that point, you get to do all the
stuff listed above _again._

(Yes, I know there are hacks you can make in the registry to extend this time
for an extra quarter or two. It's still insulting.)

The whole process is such a pain that people have written tools like ievms
([https://github.com/xdissent/ievms](https://github.com/xdissent/ievms)) just
to automate the endless, tedious downloading-unpacking-installing-self-
destructing-downloading-etc. cycle. And vendors like BrowserStack
([http://www.browserstack.com/](http://www.browserstack.com/)) make good money
charging people to do the same thing they could conceivably do with the VMs,
just because using the VMs hurts so much people will happily pay to avoid it.

And the kicker: all of this nonsense, of course, is only necessary because you
can't install two versions of IE side-by-side. And the only reason you can't
install two versions of IE side-by-side is because Microsoft, back when it was
Pure Evil, decided to _make it that way_ to force people to upgrade Windows
when they wanted to upgrade IE.

Microsoft management are considerably more enlightened these days than they
were back then. But this huge, ugly, painful, _completely unnecessary_ wart on
the Windows development experience that they forced upon the world back then
still persists, either because someone in Redmond thinks it's a good idea, or
just out of sheer laziness.

~~~
drinchev
I totally agree. It would really make more sense if they put their effort and
resources into releasing IE 9 or why not 10 for Windows XP [1]. I assume this
would really eliminate the purpose of testing to those older IEs.

I rarely open IE 10 for testing, anyway. I assume if my website does work on
latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari it will work also on recent Internet Explorers
( >= 10 ). If it doesn't work as expected, it's MS bug of a browser that users
can actually upgrade, so it's not such a big deal.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_versions#Wind...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_versions#Windows)

~~~
sliverstorm
I suspect as we approach 2015, the remaining users of XP & IE9 (or earlier)
are mostly in the " _doesn 't update software_" camp, more so than the " _can
't upgrade IE_" camp.

------
guyht
This is really great, but I am much more interested in being able to test
older (9/10) versions of IE as well.

~~~
dangrossman
Microsoft provides free VM images for IE6 through 11 --
[https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-
tools#downloads](https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads)

------
JosephRedfern
It's interesting to see how well they've managed to lock this down. You're
able to view a list of usernames with access to the machine (or domain?) that
your account is on. [http://imgur.com/t1IP02T](http://imgur.com/t1IP02T)

~~~
zuck9
How d'you find that?

~~~
crazysim
I don't know how he got there but I can get a similar list by getting a Browse
dialog out of Downloads and going to the security settings for a folder and
looking at the dialog for selecting users to add to a folder's ACL.

------
willtheperson
All I see is "IE Technical Preview" and when I try to connect "Please wait for
user profile service" Anyone else getting that?

This highlights why I prefer to just have these as local virtual machines.
When I'm working on a project and I need to do an IE pass, I don't want to
rely on this server being available. Even things like BrowserStack, which are
definitely nice, have been super laggy right when I happen to need them. Not
to mention that you can't really gauge performance over a connection like
this.

I do like the Modern IE iso's they are providing now though. Paired with
Parallels, it's one click to download and initialize a new Windows/IE combo,
and it lasts for (30?) days

~~~
JosephRedfern
There was a short delay, around 10/15s. After that, it was pretty smooth.

------
pimlottc
Maybe it's just me, but displaying 4 wobbly out-of-sync vine videos at once is
really distracting.

~~~
vlunkr
And why didn't they use a screen recorder instead of shaky camera recordings?
Looks really unprofessional.

------
ecaron
Now if only Apple would do the same thing for Safari...

~~~
eddieroger
Or you could just run any WebKit browser on Windows.

~~~
acdha
1\. WebKit is not created equal – if you need to test anything related to
system integration (e.g. font rendering, video/audio, etc.) you need real
Safari. You're also exposed to differences in the WebKit version + vendor
patches.

2\. That doesn't help at all if you need to test against Mac or iOS clients
and want the underlying layers to match. I've found a ton of Unicode-support
related issues rendering text properly which worked on Windows 7 or maybe only
8 but not OS X (or earlier versions of windows, etc.). Similar problems exist
for HTML5 media playback.

------
hesselink
This seems to work really well (for me at least) and I like the idea. However,
for actually testing the product we're building it's currently not usable,
since they've disabled cookies completely. Our product requires a login, so I
guess we'll have to stick with the VMs for now.

~~~
molant
Cookies will be enabled soon :)

------
grandalf
1) Clicked the link and downloaded/installed the app from the Mac App Store.

2) signed in with my work Microsoft account.

3) No Internet Explorer listed under remote apps.

4) Signed out and tried to sign in with my personal Microsoft account.

5) Mistyped the absurdly difficult Captcha 5 times and decided to stop wasting
time trying to play with this.

EDIT: Just now received an email inviting me to try remoteIE with my work MS
account. I just need to log back in and refresh to see invitations.

EDIT2: Tried logging back in and hitting refresh and it's still not there. I
forgot to mention that it prompts me with a message that remoteapp is not
available and that I may sign up for a free trial. If you decline the free
trial you are immediately logged out! Still no IE.

~~~
molant
Give it a try again. We've done some changes on the server side so you should
see IE and log into IE much faster. Just make sure to use the same email as
the one you received the notification.

~~~
grandalf
Tried logging out/in and still not seeing IE.

FWIW I tried Paint and the experience is pretty awesome.

------
silverwind
It's sad to see that they have resort to such methods to keep their browser
alive. Developers are beginning to skip IE testing because of this
inconvenience.

I wish Microsoft would finally untie their Browser from the OS and provide
standalone packages.

~~~
npsimons
Agreed. My first thought when I saw this is that I hope people _don 't_ use
it. I know that many people developing sites for a living can't afford to
ignore IE, but I really think that IE incompatibility is MS's problem that
they've foisted on everyone else. I wish more people would design sites to
standards and when they get complaints about "bad design", kindly point IE
users to MS tech support.

But that will never happen. The sad fact is that you have to cater to your
audience, and almost all people will just click back and look for another site
if your site doesn't render perfectly in their browser of choice (or in the
case of IE, the only browser they've ever known, even though they didn't
choose it). So much time and effort wasted due to MS's anti-competive
practices and incompetence.

------
nailer
Remember, this uses Azure: if you're in Western Europe, pick 'Northern Europe'
and not 'Western Europe' for better locality. See
[http://www.robblackwell.org.uk/2011/04/12/azure-northern-
eur...](http://www.robblackwell.org.uk/2011/04/12/azure-northern-europe-is-
dublin-and-western-europe-is-amsterdam.html)

------
slipstream-
I can't help noticing the RemoteIE VM uses a later build of Threshold Server
than is publicly available (public build is 9841.fbl_release, this uses
9860.winmain).

I guess there's no chance MS will release the ISO of said build though,
especially because this build includes the usual private-build watermarks
first introduced in Windows 8.

~~~
yuhong
9860 is publicly available though, at least the client version.

~~~
slipstream-
9860.fbl_release is publicly available.

RemoteIE uses 9860.winmain (as in, it's 9860 from the mainline branch, rather
than 9860 from the fbl_release branch). And naturally, it's server -- 9860
server isn't public at all.

------
Joeri
Not being able to access localhost makes this much less useful than it could
be. Does anyone know of any good tools to temporarily tunnel localhost onto a
public URL?

~~~
arathunku
Have you seen ngrok.com?

------
bdcravens
It's not free, but I really like Browser Stack.

~~~
nailer
Browser Stack isn't usable in Europe, at least, due to latency. As in 'type
characters and wait for them to appear on screen' or 'Eclipse' slow. modern.ie
originally used it, I hope moving to their own system speeds up
responsiveness.

~~~
Eiriksmal
Wait a second... Eclipse as in the naturally-occurring phenomena or the IDE? I
just got to view my first partial eclipse two weeks ago and have seen
firsthand how slowly the moon creeps across the sun and don't really think
Eclipse the software is _that_ slow.

~~~
btown
If you're low on RAM (and you will be... Eclipse's Law states that you _will_
download enough plugins to fill all RAM allotted), then the slightest page-in
from virtual memory can make typing in Eclipse quite the ordeal. Even if its
autocompletion is asynchronous, that's no help when your plugins are thrashing
in and out of memory all over the place.

------
spacefight
Wow, that site loops heavily in Firefox and blocks 1-3 cores at 100% with the
embedded vines...

------
lectrick
I always used Crossover Mac for this. Might not be pixel perfect but exposes
rendering issues.

------
donkeyd
Announcing RemoteIE: The only way to safely use IE.

------
gcb0
great. now you will

be blocked occasionally when site is down or your connection is bad.

not be able to save a predefined vm and reboot it every 30 days like before.

they will certainly not take into account your important project that is due
tomorrow when planning for site upgrades as you would if it were local.

and to top my day: now i will have to wait legal to allow me to test secret
project of the day on a3rd party service.

... please Microsoft, don't pull an apple and take those vms down just yet.

~~~
dstorey
The VMs are not going anywhere. This is an additional service for those that
can’t or don’t want to use virtual machines, or find this more convenient.

------
zuck9
IE on iOS & Android, finally.

------
callesgg
In my world I should not have to test the latest browsers. If it works in a
modern browser, I would assume a even newer browser would not be less
standardised.

To be honest do I only use and develop in Firefox and these days it generally
works on all other browsers as well.

