Create and Test a Project

In this tutorial, we will create a new project, add a Profile and a rule, and then test the configuration by simulating a client deployment. We’ll do all of this on a single system running both Ion Configuration Manager and Browsium Client. For this example, we’ll use Browsium’s YouRang demo website (www.yourang.us) which was designed to work well in IE8 but must be remediated with Ion to work properly in Microsoft Edge (Chromium) using Edge Internet Explorer Mode.

Create a Profile

Standard Ion Profiles provide the ability to bind specific custom file system, registry and file settings to a specific rendering mode. Ion includes twelve Standard Ion Profiles templates that can be used to create Profiles: ‘Default’, ‘Ion Adaptive IE Quirks’, ‘Ion Emulate IE7 Mode’, ‘Ion Emulate IE8 Mode’, ‘Ion Emulate IE9 Mode’, ‘Ion Emulate IE10 Mode’, ‘Ion IE Quirks Mode’, ‘Ion IE Edge Mode’, ‘Ion IE7 Standards Mode’, ‘Ion IE8 Standards Mode’, ‘Ion IE9 Standards Mode’ and the ‘Ion IE10 Standards Mode’.

Any Profile can be modified to suit your needs after it is created, but the templates will remain unchanged. Some organizations may not need to make any customizations to the settings defined in the template, while others will require several changes to a Profile to make their web applications function properly.

The following steps demonstrate how to create a Profile based on the ‘Ion IE8 Standards Mode’ document mode and load an older version of Java, both required by the YouRang website. By design, Internet Explorer and Edge Internet Explorer Mode can only load the latest version of Java installed on the PC. This design is ideal for security, but it impedes the ability to ensure web application compatibility. This example will illustrate how to create a Profile to load Java 6 update 45 (1.6.0_45) instead of the newer Java 8 update 301 (1.8.0_301) version installed on the system. Both can be found in the Java Archive website.

For this tutorial, you must be using a PC running Windows 10 or later with Microsoft Edge (Chromium). You must also install Java Development Kit (JDK) 8 update 301 and Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 update 45.

The versions of Java used in this example are for demonstration of this tutorial, the specific versions of Java needed by an organization will be determined by those applications.

Before building your Ion configuration, you may want to visit the YouRang website in Edge Internet Explorer Mode to see which portions of site fail to work properly without an Ion remediation.

OK, let’s get started on the Ion configuration we’ll need to make YouRang work properly in Edge Internet Explorer Mode.

1. Open Ion Configuration Manager. A new project is created by default. There are a variety of ways to open existing project files, but this section of the guide assumes this is your first time creating an Ion project. Therefore, we’ll have you start building your configuration from an empty new project.

2. Begin by naming your project “Ion test project” and give it the description “My first project”.\

   

3. Click on the Profiles Node, then click ‘Add Profile’ in the Actions to open the Select Profile Type screen:

Given the requirements for this web application, select ‘Standard Ion Profiles’ and click Next.

4. That brings up the Select Rendering Mode options:

Here you’ll select the rendering mode needed for the YouRang web application. Since it ran well in IE8, we’ll chose Ion IE8 Standards Mode. If you are unsure which rendering mode to use, Browsium recommends starting with the Ion Adaptive IE Quirks Mode for legacy web applications. With newer applications you can start using the Default rendering mode and then work backwards as needed. For Java-only remediations, try starting with a Global Java Profile option.

5. Enter a name and description for the new Profile. The name and description fields are for reference purposes only and can be anything useful or meaningful to your organization and environment. The other values can be changed at any time.

6. Next, you’ll configure a Java remediation using the Java Version Manager to override the default version of Java (Java 8 update 301 on this system) with the required version for the YouRang Timecard application (Java 6 update 45). Select Java Version Manager from the Profile Actions pane, and then select Java 1.6.0_45 from the dropdown list.

Click OK and once the Java Version Manager has completed building the Java version remediation the Profile Properties page will return.

The Java Version field should now display the value 1.6.0_45.

7. To ensure the YouRang website always opens an Edge Internet Explorer Mode window, change the Browser Platform to ‘Edge Internet Explorer Mode’.

8. Next, we’ll add a String Replacement to fix an issue with the YouRang Phone Purchase application. YouRang was built for IE8 and some of the JavaScript used in the site is not compatible with the JavaScript engine in IE11. In this case, the developer named a variable “formAction”, which worked fine in IE8 and IE9, but in IE10 and IE11, Microsoft changed the JavaScript engine and “formaction” became an official attribute of button objects. This change breaks customer lookup function, as the submit button no longer works. The fix is to change the variable name to a value that is not reserved by Internet Explorer.

After selecting the String Replacement Manager node, click on Add to bring up the String Replacement Editor. Then enter the following values:

a) Name the string replacement “Phone Purchase String Replacement”.

b) Description is “Fix the formAction issue in the YouRang Phone Purchase application.”

c) Enter http://yourang.us/purchase_phone.php for the Target URI.

d) Leave both Match Method and Find/Replace Method at their default values of “Simple”.

e) Enter the value “formAction” in the ‘String to Find’ field.

f) Enter the value “buttonAction” in the ‘Replace with’ field. This will change all instances of formAction with buttonAction.

g) Click ‘OK’ to save the string replacement.

9. Profile creation is now complete. Now it’s time to create a rule to invoke this Profile for the YouRang.us website.

Create a Rule

Ion uses rules to determine when to invoke a Profile. The rules system is simple and powerful but working with it requires some care to ensure the behaviors are as expected. This section provides the basics on creating and editing rules using Ion Configuration Manager.

In this example, we have identified a web application YouRang.us which is not compatible with IE11 and the current version of Java. We have just walked you through creating a Profile to remediate the YouRang application, so we need to make a rule invoke this Profile when users visit that web application.

The easiest way to create a rule using the Profile you just created is to use the ‘Add Rule using this Profile…’ link in the Actions pane from the Profile Properties page. Rules can also be created using Add Rule link in the Rules Manager Actions pane.

1. Select the Ion IE8 Standards Mode Profile you just created in the Objects pane. Click the ‘Add Rule using this Profile…’ link in the Profile Actions pane to bring up the Rule Editor window. Enter a name for the rule. Rule names are friendly names for organizational and identification purposes only and have no effect on the behavior of a rule. For this example, we will choose “YouRang website”.\

   Keep the Enable checkbox selected in order to make this rule active for use.

There are five Match Method options to choose from for ensuring the rule is triggered when desired conditions are met. The Simple — Host Name Only method does a simple string match of the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) against the text in the Value field. The Simple — Full Url method performs a case-insensitive, substring match on the entire Url including subpath AND query string. The Starts With method does a case-insensitive, ‘starts with’ string matches (and if provided, the protocols must exactly match). The RegEx method is provided for scenarios that require a set of complex matching criteria. Zone will match the Internet Explorer Zone of the target website. Most rules will only need the Simple — Host Name Only (the default option) method. For this example, we will leave the Match Method set to the default ‘Simple — Host Name Only’.

2. Enter a Value to check for rule matching conditions. For this example, we will use the domain name for our application — yourang.us.

3. Notice that the last field, Profile, already contains the name of our Profile ‘Ion IE8 Standards Mode Profile’. This is because we used the ‘Add Rule using this Profile…” link to create this rule. If a new rule was created via the Rules Manager, the Profile dropdown would be set to <No Profile>. But any available Profile can then be selected from the dropdown.

4. When you are done creating the rule, click the ‘OK’ button to save the rule to the Rules Manager.

5. Now you’re ready to test the configuration.

Test a Configuration

Ion Configuration Manager provides a simple way to save and test configurations before deployment. The following steps walk you through this process for our YouRang example.

1. Use the ‘Start Test Configuration’ menu option which will prompt you to save the project file, enter comments for Project History, and then immediately and automatically apply project file pointers directly in the system registry and start Browsium Controller to read the new Ion configuration.

Projects should be saved regularly to ensure work is not accidently lost. Ion Configuration Manager does not auto-save work in progress.

By default, Ion projects have the field ‘Show Splash Screen on Start’ set to Disabled so end users will not see the splash screen. But Start Test Configuration will always display the splash screen so that you can be sure Browsium Controller has started before testing your configuration. If you have configured Catalyst or Proton, you’ll see these entries here as well.

2. Once the test configuration has been started, open Microsoft Edge (Chromium) and browse to www.yourang.com. The YouRang website will open in an Ion-managed instance of Edge Internet Explorer Mode. You can test the Order Phone and Timecard applications with Ion to see how well they work. If you haven’t already tested these applications without Ion, you can select Clear Test Configuration from the File menu to remove the Ion configuration and allow Microsoft Edge (Chromium) to render the site natively.

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