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OT: Virtual PC for Mac. |
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| message from Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
I've been playing around with Virtual PC 6 for Mac now for few days but
need some clarification on a few things. If anyone knows I'd appreciate
the input.
I create a site folder on the Mac and do all the work in Dreamweaver on
the Mac. Test as usual in various Mac browsers, which I have linked to
Dreamweaver.
If I then want to test in VPC I drag the site folder onto the VPC
desktop, which copies all the component files of the site over to the
virtual pc. I open one of the pc browsers which I have installed onto
VPC and then open the html, which I want to test, from the site folder
which has been copied from the Mac.
This works but I dont know if its the correct process or is there a
better, more streamlined approach.
I thought I might be able to add the PC browsers to the list which I
already have in Dreamweaver for the Mac and directly open the PC
browsers from within the Mac Dreamweaver application?
Also can I have more than one version of a browser on VPC?
Thanks
Osgood.
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| darrel replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
Except for IE, yes, quite easily. Actually, there isn't a big reason to test
Mozilla on the PC, as it's pretty much identical to the mac version(s).
As for IE, you can install multiple versions via this hack:
http://www.skyzyx.com/archives/000094.php
-Darrel
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| Osgood replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
Cheers, Ive book marked the page.
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| James Shook replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
As far as I have been able to tell, you must copy files to a location
within your Virtual PC "hard drive" in order to access them from a
Windows browser, or any other Windows software you may have--you cannot
access files from within VPC that reside elsewhere on your Mac. So, like
you, every time I need to check something in a Windows browser I have to
copy it to the VPC "hard drive."
I have never tried it, but doubt very much that you can access the
Windows browsers as previewers from within DW running on the Mac.
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| darrel replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
This is incorrect.
Just share your site folder inside of VPC. It will then be mapped as a
virtual drive. All the copying/pasting is a waste of your time. ;o)
-Darrel
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| Osgood replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
When you say share do you mean, as Chris has said, use the webserver on
osX to create a dynamic site and call up the file through the via the pc
browsers?
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| darrel replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
No. You're all making this more complicated than it needs to be. ;o)
Chris's advice isn't bad, of course. It's nice especially if you are writing
in PHP or something where you need the server to actually parse the code.
However, if we're just talking straight HTML pages, you can just have
Virtual PC map a folder on your mac to a drive in Windows.
For instance, I have a folder called JOBS that I place all of my project in.
In VPC I go to SHARE FOLDER, select JOBS from my mac, and then it appears in
Windows as drive 'X:' So, as far as Windows is concerned, it just sees that
as another drive. Any changes I make in my JOBS folder is automatically seen
in my X: drive in windows.
-Darrel
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| James Shook replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
Good lord! What a fool I've been all this time. I never bothered to see
if this could be done. Thanks for the tip--no more copying to VPC. I now
have a PC volume pointing to my Macintosh work folder.
Thanks again.
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| darrel replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
You Fool!
(Glad I could help ;o)
BTW, the more files you add to the VPC the more the VPC disk image can get
bloated. While there is a tool in VPC to shrink your disk image, it doesnt'
really work, and, over time, your image will grow gigabyte by gigabyte. I
eventually shrank down one of my images but it was a huge chore (involving
various share ware apps that zero out disk space).
So now, I only install applications into my actual disk image. Every other
file/document is stored on a virtual drive in VPC which is actually a shared
folder on my Mac. The added bonus is that any files you work on in VPC can
easily be backed up (otherwise, you need to back up the entire disk image
and extract files out of it later).
-Darrel
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| James Shook replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
Those are all good points. I haven't tried to manage the VPC disk image.
But now that I don't have to copy files to it, it will more-or-less
freeze at its present size, I should think. And my normal backup routine
will get everything. (Although so far I don't have any files in VPC that
are unique--I use it just for browser testing and was copying files from
the Mac side.)
Sharing the folder also makes version skew problems go away as well :-)
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| Osgood replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
How relaible is VPC in terns of it rendering a page as it will be
rendered on an actual PC browser?
The reaon I asked is because I thought PC IE5x didnt show padding
correctly on a <div>?
<style>
#one {
width: 400px;
background-color: #ab1;
height: 20px;
}
#two {
width: 400px;
background-color: #000;
height: 20px;
padding-left: 10px;
padding-right: 10px;
}
<body>
<div id="one"></div>
<div id="two"></div>
</body>
If I view this simple test page in either IE5.0 or 5.5 in VPC I see two
<divs>. Div #two is longer than Div #one when it should be the same
length if according to what is said the padding gets added to the inside
of the <div>?
It shows it exactly the same as when viewing in browsers that get the
application of the padding corrcetly.
darrel wrote:
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| James Shook replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
Are you SURE you are using IE5? With MS's automatic bug-fix pipeline it
is very easy to accept a patch that turns IE5 into IE6. That's why I
have two OSs in VPC--so I can be sure I always have IE5.5 *and* IE6, one
in each OS.
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| Osgood replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
No, Im not sure of anything at the moment. I just downloaded the zip
files from the suggested site and transfered the resulting folders over
to the VPC desktop, opened the folder and clicked onto the IE icon as
per the instructions.
When I clicked onto the IE icon it didn't install anything it just
opened up the IE browser. There are a lot of other files, .dll .cpl
.tlb, in the folders, which I was rather thinking would be installed
somewhere to make this function correctly but this didnt happen.
Never heard of the 'automatic bug fix' but it sure does seem as though
something like that is happening.
Might have to investigate getting another OS then . Is it possible to
purchase stand alone OS's or would I have to puchase another VPC with a
specific OS with IE5.5 on it?
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| Chris In Madison replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
Before Microsoft acquired VPC from Connectix, you could get several of
~Chris
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| James Shook replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
You used to be able to by "OS Packs" with different versions of Windows,
which came with all of the basic stuff, like IE, already installed. It
was like buying a bare-bones Windows machine with no OEM software added.
Each OS Pack installed over the same underlying VPC. Since Microsoft
bought VPC, I don't know if you can still get OS Packs. I scrambled and
got my OS Packs from mail-order when I heard abut the Microsoft acquisition.
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| Chris In Madison replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
VPC *is* Windows, therefore there shouldn't be any difference. :-)
Best regards,
Chris
"Osgood" <notavailable@atthisaddress.com> wrote in message
news:cdm9g7$sqb$1@forums.macromedia.com...
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| James Shook replied to Chris In Madison on 21 Jul 2004 |
No it's not. It's a virtual machine which can run any version of Windows
that you can find an OS Pack for. I've heard you can even take an
off-the-shelf Windows CD and install it into VPC, but I've never had to
do that. VPC can also run any other OS that can be run on a PC.
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| Chris In Madison replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
Semantics :-)
VPC is the emulation layer. Windows on VPC is still Windows.
~Chris
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| darrel replied to Chris In Madison on 21 Jul 2004 |
Well, technically, VPS *emulates* an Intel Chipset. Which then allows
Windows to run on it.
So, therefore, Windows running in VPC *is* windows. ;o)
-Darrel
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| Chris In Madison replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
True, enough. Windows running in VPC is Windows. Linux running in VPC is
Linux, etc.
Chris
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| Chris In Madison replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
My advice is kinda tainted. I don't have Virtual PC, I have
Real-Live-Take-Up-More-Space-In-My-Office-PC. So I tend to do things a
little differently :-) Last time I ever messed with VPC was ages ago, and
it wasn't nearly as flexible as it is now. If I need to access my PC, I
just use Microsoft Remote Desktop to get to my server. Kinda the same
thing, only different ;-)
Best regards,
Chris
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| Osgood replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
lol. Its a struggle when I'm let loose anywhere near something new :)
I need to think this through more carefully. At the moment, as Chris
says, using localhost/blah blah/ just results in the browser trying to
connect to the internet.
I need to find the IP address and see if that works. It doesnt show in
the file sharing panel but I know it begins with 192.. Im not really
connected to anything, apart from the electricity and the internet. Its
a stand alone computer.
EXCELLENT!. That seems to work wonderfully. I was even able to sort out
the problem I had with IE not allowing me to browse out to the file I
needed to test.
Thanks.
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| Chris In Madison replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
ifconfig -a
Look for the "eth0" device :-)
Best regards,
Chris
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| Osgood replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
Thanks James.
The way I described is working well with most PC browsers apart from IE.
Of course that browser has to be different.
IE6 seems to be the default browser for the VPC I have installed. I can
just click onto the html file I want to check and it will open up in
that browser. I believe it to be IE 6 (not sure how to check which
version it is) which is install as it shows no problems which are
generally associated with IE5x, ie padding, borders on <div> the 3px jog
etc.
The other browsers which I have installed on VPC, NN7 and Mozilla.9, at
the moment I can open them up and then go to File>Open>then browse to
the html file I want to check out, which is good. IE doesn't let me do
this. When I open that browser it tries for ages to connect to the
internet, which I am already connected to via the Mac. It lets me choose
File>Open but nothing after that. It wont let me browse to a specific
htm file. Is that something that you experience?
Maybe I can stop it trying to automatically connecting to the internet,
which I dont want to do anyway. I can't seem to find any preferences or
set-up which will allow me to do this.
James Shook wrote:
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| James Shook replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
No, I have no problems opening local files from within IE, although the
process is rather idiotic (too many mouse clicks and dialogs to navigate
through. Yes, I *already told you* I want to load this file. Sheesh!)
I have two VPCs
XP Pro:
IE6
NN7
Mozilla
NN4.7
Firefox
Opera
Windows 98
IE5.5
NN4.7
and maybe some others
I have set IE's preferences to show a blank page on startup. IE does
automatically connect to the internet, however, because every once and a
while, despite what I want it to do, it takes me to microsoft.com for
yet more security updates.
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| Osgood replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
I think I must have downloaded a corrupt version from the main 'browser
archive' website (name escapes me, evolt, or something like that.
I went to the link that Darrel supplied and downloaded 5.01 and it works
ok but I have to click onto the 'x' icon in the menu bar, otherwise it
just keeps trying to download the Microsoft home page. Of course it cant
because Im not connected via XP.
although the
lol, yes, I agree. How many times does it need to ask if I want to open
a file I have already selected.
Ok, good idea. Maybe now I can get some sort of response from the
browser I might be able to find the menu that lets me do that.
Thanks.
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| James Shook replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
I think the difference between our experiences is down to the fact that
I have a cable modem which is always on. So IE/VPC can just phone home
on its own. If you are on dial-up, initiate your internet connection on
the Mac first however you do it and then run VPC. See if that makes any
difference.
I don't think there's any way to stop IE making an automatic connection
when it launches. Perhaps if you find the preferences for automatic
Windows updating (I saw it once, god knows where it is) and turn it off,
IE won't try to connect.
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| Osgood replied to James Shook on 21 Jul 2004 |
If you are on dial-up, initiate your internet connection on
Unfortunately it doesn't. Im connected all the time through the day on
dial up.
Well at least I think I've found away to cancel this, so alls well at
the moment.
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| Chris In Madison replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
Hi Osgood,
I would probably place all my site files in the Mac's web server directory
(/Library/WebServer/Documents/) or the Sites directory in your home
directory (/Users/username/Sites). Then, turn on Personal Web Sharing from
the Sharing control panel and host from the Mac. You probably can't use
http://localhost/ or http://localhost/~username/ because the Windows virtual
machine will likely think it's trying to call itself (technically a separate
computer). However, either the Sharing control panel or the Network control
panel will tell you what your Mac's current IP address is, and you can use
that from the Windows VM. Your IP address will likely be a 169.254.x.x
address if you're connected to a network without a DHCP server, 192.168.1.x
if you're behind a SOHO router like a LinkSys or Netgear, or whatever your
corporate address is if your on a company network. This could be tricky if
your machine isn't connected to the network at all (no cables, no
hub/switch), because I don't think an IP address is even assigned if the NIC
doesn't see a network connection.
The biggest reason I suggest this method is, while static files work fine
when you move them from your Mac to VPC, dynamic files (PHP, JSP, whatever)
won't because it requires a web server to process the code. It seems a
little overwhelming at first, but it works great once you get the hang of
it. So the short story is:
1. Host the files on your Mac's web server
2. Use the Mac's IP address in your Windows browser address bar
Best regards,
Chris
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| Osgood replied to Chris In Madison on 21 Jul 2004 |
Thanks Chris. I was actually wondering if I could do that because that
seems an easier root to go.
Just a thought will I have to be connected to the net via the windows
environment to access these pages on my Mac webserver?
Im on the phone right now with a client but I will read your reply
thoroughly and get back if I have and furhter questions.
Thanks
Chris In Madison wrote:
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| Chris In Madison replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
Hi Osgood,
The Internet, no. A network, probably. If I remember correctly, Macs won't
initialize the IP stack if it doesn't see the NIC in use. So if that's the
case, then there's a pretty good chance that VPC won't either, and you won't
be able to access the Mac's web server.
Best regards,
Chris
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| Dan Vendel *GOF* replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
Os,
If you don't mind me asking since VPC is ranked as pretty unstable and
will likely cause issues with your Macintosh OS: Why don't you just buy
an old PC right away? I got one for GBP 250 and is using it for e.g.
testing sites. Not the fastest <g>, but it runs Win XP, and the missus
and kid is using it for web browsing, e-mail, games, etc.
I have it hooked up the the Mac, and when I like to view a site that
resides in the Mac's "sites" folder in it, I just click the bookmarks
I've arranged. As Murray says: Badabing, badaboom.
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| Osgood replied to Dan Vendel *GOF* on 21 Jul 2004 |
Hummm I havent heard that. Not read that anywhere. If I had I probably
wouldnt have gone down that root. I guess time will tell.
Why don't you just buy
That thought had crossed my mind but I then would have had the problems
of connecting the two, which in my experience, either works first time
or doesnt work at all.
Well if I do decide to take that root I'll be asking you for advise on
how to connect the two together. Quite frankly I have no idea. The last
time I networked two macs together was a big issue so I cant begin to
imagine what problems would be encountered when hitching a mac and a PC
over a network.
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| Chris In Madison replied to Osgood on 21 Jul 2004 |
For the most part, it isn't too bad, but it certainly has its moments. It's
not as easy as it should be in some cases.
~Chris
"Osgood" <notavailable@atthisaddress.com> wrote in message
news:cdmcss$3t0$1@forums.macromedia.com...
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| James Shook replied to Dan Vendel *GOF* on 21 Jul 2004 |
I'm not Osgood, but VPC has been rock-solid for me in OS X and OS 9.
(Except for Windows crashes, of course, but you just reboot Windows--it
doesn't affect the Mac OS.) Checking web pages is all I do in Windows,
so it hardly seems worth it to devote any desk space to a dedicated
Windows box.
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| darrel replied to Dan Vendel *GOF* on 21 Jul 2004 |
VPC is very stable. At least for me. I have it running perpetually on my old
G4 tower.
Yea, windows inside of it crashes on occasion, but that's par for the
course!
But, yes, getting a cheap used PC is certainly a viable solution as
well...if you ahve the desk space, of course. When on the road, carrying
both a Mac and Windows laptop just to check websites is rather cumbersome
;o)
-Darrel
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| Dan Vendel *GOF* replied to darrel on 21 Jul 2004 |
I've heard lots of not-so-nice things about VPC. Also, haven't the
developer deserted the product?
Anyway, to me it seems an awfully awkward way to get what's easier
achieved doing the "real" thing (this thread proves my point).
About mobility: Here in Swedeland we don't buy laptops at all. That's
for chickens and Wall Street wannabes. We carry the desktop computers as
they are, and since we have two arms, a Mac and a PC won't be that
difficult, perhaps a bit in the way when we're fencing off polar bears.
That's all....
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| James Shook replied to Dan Vendel *GOF* on 21 Jul 2004 |
"Microsoft didn't buy us out. We deserted the product!"
Sure :-)
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| darrel replied to Dan Vendel *GOF* on 21 Jul 2004 |
Really? I think it's an amazing product.
Microsoft seems to still be going strong. ;o)
Well, it is 'real' windows. That's the point. The big advantage is that it's
on one machine. And you can easily clone your install. It makes a great
testing machine, actually, speed aside. Rebooting a PC into different
partitions is much more time consuming than rebooting virtual machines.
Haha! ;o)
(So, how do you then test in Linux? Back pack? ;o)
-Darrel
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| darrel replied to Murray *TMM* on 21 Jul 2004 |
I think they have 52B on hand as cash. They're *only* giving out 32B in
dividends. ;o)
-Darrel
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| Dan Vendel *GOF* replied to Murray *TMM* on 21 Jul 2004 |
What does that mean in the Queen's English?
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| Murray *TMM* replied to Dan Vendel *GOF* on 21 Jul 2004 |
That means that if you own 1000 shares of Microsoft stock, they will send
you a check for $3000.
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| seb replied to Murray *TMM* on 21 Jul 2004 |
which is he going to donate to charity, actually a charity organisation
that he owns, charity that happens to promotes windows PCs in the third
world under cover of "education" and "development" help.
haha!
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| David B replied to seb on 21 Jul 2004 |
If Gates is interested in helping third world education systems, he
might want to donate money to the train wreck in his own back yard,
Seattle. Oh, wait - he already has. It's now even worse than it was before.
Nevermind!
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