Surely it isn’t because they’re upset that they’re distributing crappy bug ridden old versions of their browser (a ton of other places have been doing that without any problems). Will be interesting to see what dispute they have with to pull IE. They should think of how much they’re alienating their own customers before pulling a trick like this!
Microsoft would have lost a sale for windows 7 if it wasn’t for this service stepping in to fill a massive gap microsoft has left for web developers, and if they’d done this just a couple of weeks earlier they would have lost my business. If I knew I wouldn’t be able to use for testing – I would have stuck with XP and not bothered upgrading.
Since upgrading to windows 7 64 bit recently it looks like I can’t run multipleIE any more there, so it’s back to setting up an old XP box for that now. It might be understandable if they offered their own solution, but they don’t (and running multiple virtual machines that expire and need to be re-installed just doesn’t cut it).
It’s like they’re going out of their way to make development for their own browsers more difficult (yet again). Unbelievable – I only found out today that microsoft have pulled IE from Expressions is cool, but I would rather be Spoon fed. I really hope they can get this resolved. So, in effect, Spoon was downloading components of the OS with the virtualization. Basically, he said that Spoon was in violation of the EULA since they were virtualizing the IE browser, which requires a piece of the OS to run. While I had the attention of the presenter at the conference, I asked him about the issue between MS and Spoon.
Since I own an MSDN subscription, I was able to install the paid version of Expression. When I asked the presenter as to whether or not they were going to include Opera, Chrome or any other popular browsers, he said he didn’t know. HOWEVER, the free version only allows you to do this with IE browsers and the purchased version only allows you to add Firefox and Safari. It is a VERY cool tool and could be of GREAT benefit for developers. This tool will allow you to set a base browser, then pull up another virtual browser to do side-by-side comparisons. One tool he used heavily was Microsoft Expressions 4 – Web. Well, I was recently at a Tech Ed conference where the presenter was talking about IE6 – IE9 and the differences (from a developer’s perspective).
So, all you can do now is to wait for Microsoft to finish talks with the guys from Spoon and come to their senses. Link to xenocode’s browsers page: Xenocode
Unlike traditional software applications, Xenocode WebApps do not require any software to be installed and allow multiple application versions to run side-by-side on any version of Windows. Web designers, system administrators, and other users can now evaluate Internet Explorer 8, 7, and 6, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, and Google Chrome directly from the web in a risk-free manner.
The Xenocode Browser Sandbox allows all popular Windows browsers to be run simultaneously, directly from the web.
If you are looking for an easy solution for running multiple IEs (IE6 standalone, IE7 standalone and IE8 standalone.) or any other popular browsers versions side by side AND all of that right from your browser, check out the Xenocode’s page or read on before jumping off.īrowser sandbox has been moved to this place.īe patient the first time you use any of the browsers and it will pay off next time it runs ? Quote from their site