Run IE on your Intel Mac, if you absolutely have to
If you're a Mac-based web developer, a sysadmin at SomeBigCo, or an Outlook Web Access user, you might find yourself needing to use MS Internet Explorer from time to time. No, not IE for Mac OS X, frozen in amber within Applications folders around the globe; I mean IE for Windows, the hairy scary Active-X enabled browser that for better or worse represents a huge chunk of the web-surfing world.Getting 'real' IE on the Mac, up until now, has meant OS emulation (Virtual PC), virtualization (Parallels/VMware), API translation (Wine/CrossOver) or remote access (RDC). Now there's another option for Intel Mac owners: ies4osx, a Mac port of the ies4linux package. Built on top of the Darwine version of the Wine Win32 API translation layer, ies4osx downloads and installs an official version of IE (you pick from v5, 5.5, 6 or 7) and then runs it inside the X11 environment on your Mac.
The resulting browser looks a little weird -- almost like a Bizarro version of IE, with the slightly altered type and menu look of the X11 windowing system -- but this bear can dance. OWA runs nicely, with full rich-text editing and message search, and the administration pages for MS Virtual Server also work pretty well. I wouldn't depend on ies4osx in a production role, at least not with the current build, but for one-off testing of websites in IE it's worth the (free) download. The ies4linux developer plans to roll the Mac-specific fixes back into the main package, so the next version of ies4 will probably support both Mac and Linux users from the same codebase.
[via MacApper]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Michele Fishman said 11:48AM on 2-04-2008
I installed darwine and ie 6 and 7 my only problem is that I can't see what I type lots of blank spaces in the menus. Anybody else have this problem? I have 2 ghz dual core intel with 10.4.11
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DMXell said 7:17AM on 11-30-2007
I tried this and it didn't work well. After switching users it won't open at all now. My only guess as to why is the fact that I hacked X11 to get GIMP working. So if anyone else also hacked X11 to the GIMP working, please post your results.
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Ricaus said 11:40AM on 2-07-2008
I was able to install IE6 successfully but the performance isn't very great. Part of the tool bar is blacked out and half of the screen distorted.
Think Adrian said 7:34AM on 11-30-2007
After installing IE6 and IE7 none of them even launched. Macbook core duo 2.0 GHz, Leopard 10.5.1
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jiverson said 11:44AM on 12-01-2007
Did you install Darwine first? If you don't you'll get an error that you can't install Explorer. I've been using es4osx since yesterday on a mac mini with 10.5 and it's already helped kill two bugs we've been trying to track down all week.
Matthew Laver said 7:36AM on 11-30-2007
... this bear can dance??
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DJCarbon43 said 9:21AM on 11-30-2007
Maybe like "Dancing Bear" honey? (Which is very good by the way)
JimD said 7:47AM on 11-30-2007
I couldn't get it to work at all.
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NotAwesome said 7:16PM on 12-01-2007
I couldn't get it to work either after following the instructions exactly.
But then I opened up X11 first (in the Utilities folder) and everything worked fine. Pages kept blinking in and out though, driving me crazy.
Alex Oughton said 8:20AM on 11-30-2007
For me, following the instructions on the page exactly, this worked perfectly. Very useful indeed.
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PhilH said 9:38AM on 11-30-2007
How IE-like is it? Could I reliably check my HTML and CSS on it and expect it to work exactly the same in IE on a PC?
(I have tried to install it, but couldn't get it to work. I'd like to know if it's worth persevering with)
Stu Jones said 8:20AM on 11-30-2007
Does this mean we can finally get some shockwave goodness on the mac, without resorting to rosetta?
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Christina Warren said 12:21PM on 11-30-2007
Not if you actually want to see Shockwave. It's buggy as all get out. Flash doesn't work in IE 7 - barely works in IE 6 and the re-draw, even on a C2D 2.16 w/2 GB of RAM is ridiculous.
Semireg said 9:55AM on 11-30-2007
This is an interesting story and future updates should be covered by TUAW. Thanks!
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Dachaz said 10:24AM on 11-30-2007
I can make it run only when I launch a Darwine test-app first.
And even though I chose IE7 it launched something pretty much IE5-like.
Plus, it didn't even manage to finish rendering a page from my MAMP localhost, and having it connect to my bank's https works every now and then.
Not to mention that responsiveness is terrible.
Running IE in Parallels takes a bit longer to load, but then works way better than this.
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Jim C. said 10:37AM on 11-30-2007
Well, it does work... it's just not terribly fast. I installed IE6 and IE7, and IE7 felt like I was running through a 9600 baud modem. IE6 was quite a bit better, and it works well with basic HTML/CSS sites. Complex CSS/JavaScript/AJAX seems to throw it for a bit of a loop, though... the main Yahoo.com page got stuck in an endless redraw cycle.
It seems to be fine for a novelty, but for web site testing (or dealing with the idiots that have IE-only sites), a virtual machine with Windows installed would still the better way to go.
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James Madley said 10:49AM on 11-30-2007
That's normal for IE7. It takes forever to do anything at all.
Dalton said 11:44AM on 11-30-2007
Oh my god, this just installed Comic Sans on my computer. Die Comic Sans, Die!
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Dalton said 12:20PM on 11-30-2007
Oh yeah, and the software installed fine for me. I am browsing using IE 6 right now. The graphics refresh seems a little slow, but otherwise it is working well.
LD said 12:10PM on 11-30-2007
Installed it and it worked like a champ for my purposes. I have used this as a workaround for my company's web app, which is currently stuck in ActiveX land. This allows IE to be installed, the ActiveX control installs just fine, and I can run our web app.
There could be some rendering improvements, but I don't know if that's Darwine related or X11 related.
Using the same concept on Linux with ies4linux worked much better, but this is acceptable and the way it packages IE into a .app is genius.
The setup couldn't be easier. For those who are having setup issues, make sure you follow the entire two step process. I suspect you aren't loading Darwine or aren't loading the version he has on his site.
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