ZURB – RDC: The Last Tool You Need for Browser Testing on a Mac

RDC: The Last Tool You Need for Browser Testing on a Mac by Mark

February 19, 2009 in Implementation with 8 Comments

We have to hand it to Microsoft on this one. Remote Desktop Connection for Mac is a slick, fast, and easy to setup way to handle your cross browser testing as a Mac-using Web designer.

Remote Desktop Connection (RDC for short) is ridiculously easy to setup. It's fast and responsive, and is a cheap and effective resource for testing websites across platforms and browsers. It's like having VMware Fusion on crack, only without draining your Mac's resources.

There is a reason designer rhymes with whiner; as Mac designers, we want and expect a lot of our tools. While not without it's issues, RDC is exactly what we need for browser testing.

Camera 1, Camera 2. Just like on our virtual machines, Remote Desktop Connection gives us all our browsers in one spot. Awesome.

Efficient, Fast, and Easy to Use

At ZURB, half our team has Apple MacBook Pros—"the design side." They're fast, portable, and reliable when it comes to Web development. However, being Mac users, we run into a problem any other Apple fanboy might: testing websites in Windows-based browsers. First it was Parallels, then it was VMware Fusion, and now it's RDC.

Just fire up RDC, enter the name or IP address of a computer, and connect.

RDC is just awesome compared to VMware Fusion, our previously go-to testing environment. Now, after a little setup, we're using one of the (slightly) older Windows PCs in our office as our official Gauntlet—a one-stop cross-browser bug killing beast. Okay, maybe it's not that cool, but it's damn easy.

Is there a downside?

Unlike VMware or Parallels, RDC doesn't support dragging and dropping from your desktop to that of the connected PC's. This also means copy and paste for files doesn't work between them—however, you can copy and paste text. Perfect for sharing URLs. Also, while RDC supports millions of colors for your desktop display, we've noticed a bit of choppiness in our larger images (especially gradients).

The largest downside so far, however, has been that only one person can be connected to the machine at a time (we believe this is a Windows XP shortcoming). Still, our office can live with these small shortcomings when we're more efficient and effective with the dedicated testing environment.

Remote Desktop Trumps Virtual Machine

With an easy to use and advanced settings panel, RDC conforms to your Mac's setup.

We all noticed a huge jump in resource usage with the latest version of VMware Fusion, and frankly, we all got sick of it pretty quickly.

Even with 4GB of memory and a dual core processor, each time we'd fire up Fusion, it would render our computer inert for at least a minute. Don't move your mouse, don't click on something else, and for heaven's sake don't even try to use Photoshop at the same time.

And while a dedicated testing environment might not work for everyone—freelancers might not have the resources for another computer in their office—it certainly helps in our team environment.

It's fast, works over our VPN, can be up and running in under 10 seconds, and makes it easy to test all the browsers (Firefox 2/3, Safari, Internet Explorer 6/7).

So what's the lesson? Simple: however you set up your own Gauntlet, be sure it keeps you and your team efficient and accurate. A remote desktop and a virtual machine are both solid options and have both suited our needs well.

Want to give Remote Desktop Connection a try on your own? Head on over to Microsoft's Mactopia and download the RDC install and set it up with one of your local Windows-powered PCs. Be sure to compare it to your own Gauntlet and let us know how it goes!

8 Comments

Mepho says:

Does the free download of RDC require a license after a few days of use?

Great post, I am looking to test better without booting up my parallels... it makes my computer's fan make crazy sounds
Mark says:

@Mepho: No, it doesn't! It's a free download from Microsoft, which if you have an extra PC with Windows lying around, makes it a great alternative to Parallels or VMware Fusion.
Tor Løvskogen Bollingmo says:

Interesting. Does Fusion 2.0 hog alot of resources? I've got 1.0, and it's working smooth. I don't run Photoshop when I browser test (got the new and top spec'ed MBP) - and I fire up Vista, XP and Kubuntu just fine.
Mark says:

@Tor: The loading process is by far the most intensive. We're all up to date here at the office with 2.0, and having been a users of the previous version as well, we saw a significant degradation in speed. Overall performance (once running) isn't too bad, but it's nothing compared to RDC.

Fusion is certainly useful with snapshots and the ability to run other OSs on it (same with Parallels), but when it comes to downright speed and performance for a Windows testing environment, we're in love :).
Loren says:

I think it's important to point out that the requirement of having another computer running windows is definitely a downside, especially for freelancers who don't have extra equipment laying around. That being said, great solution!
Steve says:

I use parallels to test my IE issues. It starts up quick and runs fast, even when I still have all my Adobe applications running.
Markus says:

All Windows desktop OSs limit RDC to one session at a time. If you want to habe multiple sessions you need to use a server OS. The standard server comes with two concurrent sessions but you can buy Terminal Server CALs anytime.

The new RDC coming with Windows Server 2008 has support for remote apps, so you can start the apps straight from your Macs ;)
Brent says:

RDC does support mapping of local drives so you're able to copy and paste files through Windows Explorer. That said, it's not quite as convenient as drag/drop or standard window-to-window copy and paste.