How can I best do accurate cross-browser testing on pages? - responsive-design

My goal is to get together a really solid set of testing environments for my web development. I want to leverage more HTML5/CSS3 and need to develop my toolchain better for testing in different browser environments.
I natively work in Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows. I have a mac laptop but can't always have it with me when travelling.
This is how I envision getting all environments on one laptop:
1. Ubuntu Linux (xubuntu/xfce)
2. Virtualbox / Windows
3. Virtualbox / Hackintosh
4. IOS dev environment (virtualbox ?)
5. Android Dev environment (native linux?)
Anyone have input?
This is all spurred by recently viewing one of my sites on an original iPad which still has IOS5 / Safari5. i realized that not just windows technology is crufty anymore. Internet Explorer and Safari are starting to run into many of the same long term web compatibility issues.
Thanks!

try something like https://www.equafy.com?
there is a free plan that shall include all but Mac.

Related

Appcelerator \ Titanium - Cross platform development

I'm looking to build a mobile application that works on iOS and BlackBerry. I have been looking at the Appcelerator platform which seems quite highly recommended but I still don't see how I can build for both platforms easily.
The problem is that it looks like for iOS it needs to be built on a MAC and for BlackBerry it needs to be build in Windows! So what would be the easiest setup to target both platforms? Would I literally just have to do the build separately on two different machines?
This question has instructions for downloading the SDK for mac, user seems to have an issue with running the simulator however.
How to develop Blackberry apps on Mac OS?
If that doesn't work you could always use a vm of windows on a mac and create the titanium project as a shared project between the OS and the vm

Silverlight WebApp on Non-Windows platforms,

I have decided to use a silverlight player on my ASP.NET WebApp ,I haven't used silverlight before ,let me know would the player be able to run on Non-Windows platforms (such as Mac or Ubuntu) inside the browser ?
Silverlight is a browser-plugin. There are versions available for both Windows and Mac OS (see teh system requirements listed here). Your end-user will be directed to download the plugin for their specific OS if they do not have it installed. Once installed your application will run in exactly the same way on Mac and Windows.
For Linux there is Moonlight, which gives Silverlight plugin support, but I don't know how mature this is yet.

Can the ARM version of Windows 8 only run Metro (WinRt) style apps?

See also: Is there any way to write a WinRt (Metro) app that will also work on Windows 7 and Vista?
I am trying to understand how to target both Windows 8 on Arm and Windows 7, given that Windows 7 cannot run WinRT apps. And as I understand it, apps can only be installed on ARM version of Windows 8 from the App Store.
So can Windows 8 on the Arm run none WinRT apps?
The definitive answer is out now. There will be a desktop, but you will not be able to install desktop apps. "WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps." All apps will come from the store and will have to abide by the Metro style app guidelines.
The only desktop apps appear to be Office (which seems to ship with the OS) and built-in apps like the control panel, Explorer, IE, etc. Everything else will be a new Metro-style app written against the Windows Runtime.
See this Building Windows 8 blog post for details.
"No legacy apps" is not the same as "no Desktop apps" though.
Nothing I've seen suggests that there won't be a regular Win32 with COM, IE, MSHTA, etc. on ARM along with an Explorer Desktop.
You may simply need to recompile C++ or .Net after some tweaking or "retargeting." Things like HTAs may even port with close to zero effort as long as they don't use any custom COM libraries. I'm surprised anyone ever expected any x86 code to run on ARM, even under some sort of WOW emulation. Microsoft has been pretty clear about that.
Whether it makes any sense to do much of this (desktop apps on ARM) is another matter, even if you can. The ARM-based devices are likely to be quite resource-constrained, which is the purpose in having them in the first place: cheap and portable.
Microsoft has made no statement about whether or not desktop apps will be supported on Arm processors. They have shown Microsoft Office running, but have not said whether that will be supported on the final platform.
For now the only statements have been about Metro style apps and those will be supported written in any language.

Automated UI testing of SilverLight on Mac

I'm looking to do automatic UI testing of SilverLight applications on Mac.
There are a few tools to test SilverLight on windows but I couldn't find any that will run tests on Mac.
Anybody know of such a tool?
Shahar
I was referred to this
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UnitTestingSilverlightWithSelenium.aspx
Not the best solution but it is some a start
Microsoft's Test Manager is a very useful tool for PC.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb385901.aspx
But I'm not sure if its possible for Mac. So you can just test for browsers run on PC. Firefox is also available on Mac as far as I know. I don't think Safari browser behaves diffrent because silverlight is a plugin and most of your code work on this plugin.

Testing DirectX applications in Virtual PC?

I would like to test my WPF applications using Windows Virtual PC under Windows 7. In my C# code, I'm checking the WPF tier and if it's less than 2, I disable a DirectX call. In order to test on Windows XP, I'd like to use Windows Virtual PC but it seems to only run in software mode. Thus, the tier is always <2.
Any ideas on how to enable DirectX to work in Virtual PC?
Virtual PC 2007
It seems that 3D acceleration is not supported by Virtual PC 2007 but I just found a blog's article where the author found a solution to enable 3D acceleration on Windows 7 client. The trick should work only with both host and client running Windows 7.
Here is the link. Hope it helps.
VirtualBox
VirtualBox, since version 3.0, provide support for 3D acceleration with DirectX 8/9.
Unfortunately it is not very stable and in addition Visual Studio crashes when developing WPF applications and 3D acceleration is enabled.
A ticket has been opened and it says that they are working on a fix
VMware Workstation
Also VMware Workstation provided experimental DirectX support since release 5.5. But reading through their forum topics it seems that WPF development works with 3D acceleration enabled only with VMare Workstation 7 and later.
I didn't try myself but it seems promising. On the product page you can see Aero 3D working on Windows 7 and a screen shows also Half-Life!
From this page:
VMware Workstation was the first to
support 3D graphics in virtualized
environments and is now the first to
support Windows Aero in Windows Vista
and Windows 7 virtual machines. Run
even more 3D applications with support
for DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and
OpenGL 2.13D graphics in Windows
virtual machines.
Evaluate the trial and let us know...
Sorry, even latest Virtual PC doesn't support hardware DirectX redirection.
You can try VMWare Workstation 7.1. They claim to support DirectX up to 9.0c, which is enough to get you to tier 2.
VMWare 7.1.3 does support DirectX but only if you are using the 8 subset rather than a full 9.0c implementation. As a result, while the dxdiag will run properly, actually using a tool that requires a full 9.0 implementation is hit or miss - i.e., you have to run it to see if it works. I have tried various games and development tools which state the exact same requirements and run properly on a system with 9.0 installed, but under VMware - some of them work, and others die immediately - so it seems they are correct and only the 8 subset is working at present - so if you don't need 9.0 you're good to go, but if you do, you're DOA.
So the support isn't fully stable - but it's worth a try if you have no other option.

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