Microsoft Makes Windows 10 VMs Available to Web Developers

Developers wishing to test their web sites and apps on Microsoft’s new Edge browser now have a new option: they can obtain Windows 10 virtual machines (VMs) and test on their platform of choice.

“Windows 10 virtual machines are now available with the latest updates to Microsoft Edge and the underlying web platform,” the Microsoft Edge team notes in a new post to the Microsoft Edge Dev Blog. “With this release, we have automated the process we use to create the virtual machines, so future updates will be available more quickly as the platform is updated.”

The virtual machines are available from the Microsoft Edge Dev web site. And you have a range of VM options:

Windows. Hyper-V 2012, VirtualBox and VMWare.

Mac. Parallels, VirtualBox and VMWare.

Linux. VirtualBox.

In the “coming weeks,” Microsoft will make Windows 10 with Edge VMs available in other formats, too, including Vagrant boxes with VirtualBox and QEMU. (Various older Windows versions—XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1—are available as well, with IE versions 6 through 11.) Microsoft Edge will be made available via Azure RemoteApp in the future, too, meaning you can run just the app virtualized, instead of needing to run the full OS.

Concurrently with this release, Microsoft has also updated its Microsoft Edge Dev site, adding major fixes and new features and a faster, clearer platform roadmap. That roadmap how and when Microsoft plans to add platform features—not end-user features—to the new browser. Of a bit more interest to end users, perhaps, is the Microsoft Edge FAQ, which answers some new, mostly technical questions about the browser.