Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/test-internet-explorer-android-ios-mac-os-x/
Earlier this year, the Microsoft team launched a new tool to make it easier to test sites in IE regardless of which platform you’re on (seriously). It’s part of their work on Project Spartan and its new rendering engine and new user-agent string, which is a fork of Trident that’s far more interoperable with the mobile Web.
In this tutorial, I want to demonstrate what this looks like in Chrome on my MacBook and how to set it up.
TL;DR? Here are some Vines to show you it in action:
- Mac OSX
- Android
- iOS
- Win7
The tool is called RemoteIE and is designed to offer a virtualized version of the latest version of IE. This allows you to test out the latest version of IE without have to have a virtual machine installed. And if you want to test for past versions of IE, you can always use the free virtual machines on modern.IE by starting here.
Getting Set Up
I ran through the steps to use the tool myself and wanted to document everything in case you run into any hiccups.
First, head on over to http://remote.modern.ie/ which will take you to this page:
At which point you’ll be asked to download the Microsoft Remote Desktop app for whichever platform you want. This could be for:
Mac OS X
iPhone or iPad
Android
Windows x86 or x64
Windows RT
If you have a Live.com or Outlook.com you can use that or you can register for a new one. No, you don’t need to use those services for anything else if you don’t want to but they’ve actually gotten way better and it might be worth a look.
Next, you’ll want to select which server is closest to you so you have the best possible performance:
You’ll need a Microsoft account to use the service since it needs to associate the service to that account.
As you can see, I was serious when I said this would be available cross-platform. On your Mac, download the app from the Apple App Store. Clicking on the “Mac” link will direct you to the online Apple store site.
Click on the “View in Mac App Store” button so that you can launch the App Store app on your Mac. You’ll be presented by a confirmation notice from Chrome (or your fav OS X browser) to launch the external app:
And after you confirm it you’ll be in the App Store entry:
