If you don't already, try this IE VM automated installation script: https://github.com/xdissent/ievms

Not much help for people running their dev environment in a VM since running two VMs at the same time is quite horrible/impossible even on recent powerful macs.

First, instead of fixing their stupid browser so it works like all the others, they provide "tools" to ask that you make your sites compliant with their stuff

Second, my site uses jQuery UI 1.10 and they suggest I update to 1.9.

Regarding web browsers, Microsoft is still sucking balls, year after year.

Yep, all this stuff was already available. We've been using BrowserStack for ages and the VMs have been available from MS for a long time. All they've done here is package it up in a shiny looking website that's basically begging developers not to forget about IE now that everybody writes for webkit & mozilla.

Design teams that aren't techy enough for VMs, OSes that don't support emulating X (ie, Windows users wanting to test their mobile site on an iOS device), and testing a large number of variations come to mind.

For instance, how long (and how much HD space!) would it take you to set up emulators for all these? http://www.browserstack.com/list-of-browsers-and-platforms (note that these are in-your-browser remote desktop sessions, essentially. some services are static images, like BrowserShots.org, some are not)

For most people, I totally agree, especially with e.g. the IEVMS script. Pretty simple, low cost, and it probably covers all the variety you need, since it's not too hard to install multiple versions of Firefox and Chrome on most OSes. But exceptions exist, and I'd be willing to bet they're relatively large (absolute) numbers.

i felt this was a major issue. then i noticed the high quality setting in BrowserStack. with high quality set, sites look great!

Does anyone use testling.com? http://testling.com/

I'd assume that as well. I have collected several Microsoft IDs by way of Hotmail/live.com/outlook.com but I only have one Facebook account.

Not that much of a pain if you don't need to develop apps with it.

I didn't sign up to instagram and spotify last weekend because they seemed to want my facebook details.

No, I do not want my music taste and photographs automatically shared with a random selection of friends, strangers, and businesses. There is a slight difference between who I am and who I want other people to think I am.

This sort of thing pisses me off too. Until/unless a widely-adopted global user uniqueness authentication system is developed[1], we'll continue to see web properties use third-parties to provide a semblance of this utility.

For the moment, Facebook is rapidly cornering the market. Which is too bad, in my opinion.

[1]: Random Idea: Maybe ISPs can start issuing randomly-generated cryptographic key pairs along with an IP address. This way, a particular IP + public key would be distinguishable from the next user who gets that IP address, but would not be traceable to a particular customer (not any more so than an IP by itself), and would be used only until the customer requests a new IP.

The key would provide IP address authentication ("this IP has not been assigned to someone new since the public key is the same as before.") This would all happen transparently beneath the application layer (perhaps as an extension to TCP), so existing app-layer protocols could use it OotB. Other handy features might include detecting if a machine with a static IP has had its connection interrupted since your last visit.

Each keypair could be signed using the ISP's own private key as a protection against being spoofed. Customers would be asked to choose some sort of password/phrase/favorite number/etc. as part of their service signup, which would then be used by the ISP as part of the seed for keygen system.

It's the only option they support. Some people choose to have no association with Facebook, for a variety of reasons (usually privacy related) - and now Microsoft says "hey that Microsoft ID we made you create for all our other services, it doesn't work here!"