Run Multiple Browsers Simultaneously: A Web Developers Dream
Experienced web developers test their websites on lots of browsers before the sites are deployed. Unfortunately, this can be a real hassle. Some browsers run only on a few operating systems. There is no recent version of Safari, for example, that runs on Windows. Edge, the new browser from Microsoft, runs only on Windows 10 – not on Windows 7 or Windows 8. In addition, some browsers are mutually incompatible. Although IE 11, IE 10, IE 9 and IE 8 all run on Windows 7, no two of these can even be installed – let alone run – on a single Windows 7 PC.
(Many Browsers)
Fortunately, ParallelsDesktop can help here – a lot. In figure 1 you can see seven browsers all running simultaneously on my MacBook Pro. (And if you can’t distinguish IE 9 from IE 11, figure 2 annotates the same screenshot in figure 1.)
(Many Browsers Annotated)
With this setup, a web developer or web tester can check their site on seven browsers all at the same time – just point each browser at your staging server. If a problem is seen in one browser, it can be corrected, and the correction checked in all the browsers at once.
In this dream setup for a web developer, I have taken advantage of the fact that Parallels Desktop can run multiple different operating systems at the same time, as long as you have sufficient RAM on your Mac.
In setting up everything for this blog post, I used VMs from Microsoft’s Modern.IE team. These VMs – available for download without cost from inside Parallels Desktop – were created by Microsoft to assist web developers, and an agreement between Microsoft and Parallels makes them available to Parallels Desktop users. Figure 3 shows the download dialog inside Parallels Desktop. (Note: Figure 3 has been Photoshopped to show you the full set of Modern.IE VMs.)
(Modern IE Virtual Machines)
So, if you are a web developer or tester, and if the hassle of testing in multiple browsers is wearing you down, Parallels Desktop provides you a better way.
Get a free 14-day trial of Parallels Desktop here.
