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]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
11-30-2007 @ 7:17AM
DMXell said...
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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2-07-2008 @ 11:40AM
Ricaus said...
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.
11-30-2007 @ 7:34AM
Think Adrian said...
After installing IE6 and IE7 none of them even launched. Macbook core duo 2.0 GHz, Leopard 10.5.1
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12-01-2007 @ 11:44AM
jiverson said...
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.
11-30-2007 @ 7:36AM
Matthew Laver said...
... this bear can dance??
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11-30-2007 @ 9:21AM
DJCarbon43 said...
Maybe like "Dancing Bear" honey? (Which is very good by the way)
11-30-2007 @ 7:47AM
JimD said...
I couldn't get it to work at all.
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12-01-2007 @ 7:16PM
NotAwesome said...
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.
11-30-2007 @ 8:20AM
Stu Jones said...
Does this mean we can finally get some shockwave goodness on the mac, without resorting to rosetta?
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11-30-2007 @ 12:21PM
Christina Warren said...
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.
11-30-2007 @ 8:20AM
Alex Oughton said...
For me, following the instructions on the page exactly, this worked perfectly. Very useful indeed.
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11-30-2007 @ 9:38AM
PhilH said...
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)
11-30-2007 @ 9:55AM
Semireg said...
This is an interesting story and future updates should be covered by TUAW. Thanks!
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11-30-2007 @ 10:24AM
Dachaz said...
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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11-30-2007 @ 10:37AM
Jim C. said...
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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11-30-2007 @ 10:49AM
James Madley said...
That's normal for IE7. It takes forever to do anything at all.
11-30-2007 @ 11:44AM
Dalton said...
Oh my god, this just installed Comic Sans on my computer. Die Comic Sans, Die!
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11-30-2007 @ 12:20PM
Dalton said...
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.
11-30-2007 @ 12:10PM
LD said...
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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11-30-2007 @ 12:21PM
Jeremy Olson said...
I followed the instructions and it works great. I'm running leopard and have not used X11 until now. If I can confirm that the rendering is exactly the same as IE, I can test HTML and CSS on all major IE versions at once! Much better than running Parallels (which robs my system resources).
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