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November 29, 2007

software

Masochism: Run Internet Explorer for Windows on your Mac

Posted Nov. 29, ’07, 3:27 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category | Software

ies4osx1.jpgThere’s this weird obsession with running Windows apps on Macs. Virtualization, dual-booting, API-simulating, etc., etc., etc. Sure, some people need to run Windows apps and there are some apps for Windows that you just can’t find for the Mac…but c’mon. It’s just creepy. And, frankly, a little gross.

But hey, whatever floats your boat. Who am I to judge, right? And while this latest run-a-Windows-app-on-your-Mac thing gives me the shivers, I can understand how it may be useful for some — especially web-devs looking for an easy way to test their sites on a variety of browsers.

ies4osx is a project that lets your run various versions of Internet Explorer for Windows (from 5.0 to 7.0 BETA) on your Mac, using X11 and the Darwine back-bone. Download Darwine, drag it to your Applications folder, then run ies4osx. Select which browsers you want installed and blammo…IE on your Mac.

Creepy. Yucky. And spooky. But it works.

[via LifeHacker]


10 Comments

Anonymous said:

Why would anyone want to run IE on a MAC?

I can't even begin to imagine why someone would go to all that trouble for such a nasty product

November 29, 2007 4:41 PM
nicleT said:

Ha Ha! The title is perfect!!!

November 29, 2007 5:46 PM
exnihilo said:

As distasteful as it is, there are still many websites that only with Windows version Explorer. This is especially true in some foreign countries. I've often had to boot into Fusion to get at these websites. This may be a more convenient method.

November 29, 2007 6:02 PM
PT said:

Does that mean some of those cool sites that don't work on the Mac will run fine running Explorer this way? Wow!

November 29, 2007 6:43 PM
Jasonxe9 Author Profile Page said:

I can give 2 unfortunate reasons. Microsoft Outlook Web and Microsoft CRM. I am a Mac Switcher. I have VMware installed but don't like to sue it just to login to my company's CRM to look up case assignments. Now with this IE I can do that without using my resources just for a VMWare session. Just my 2 cents.

November 29, 2007 11:13 PM
Stanislav Majerski said:

Well if you are a web developer/designer all your pages must work in IE6 since most of the people still use it. So having a option to quickcheck and troubleshoot your pages to work on IE is very welcome.

Same possible with VMFusion/Parallels but this is so much faster and cheaper.

November 30, 2007 1:25 AM
michael said:

This is not for those who use the web, but for those who make the web.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a website render perfectly on Internet Explorer (any of them, well, #7 made some progress) that already does render perfectly on both Firefox and Safari? That really is the most frustrating part of making websites.

Anything that makes this testing easier is great. A few months ago web developers on the Mac had to have some old windows box standing around somewhere. (Then, of course, came the Intel Macs, Boot Camp and finally Parallels, so actually all of this testing is already luckily quite easy)

November 30, 2007 3:55 AM
Boz Kay Author Profile Page said:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for this post - saves me booting up Parallels to view sites in IE.

If you hear of the non-beta IE7 as a Mac standalone, put it in a post, then I won't need to boot up windows at all. Horray!

November 30, 2007 7:03 AM
Tim Author Profile Page said:

ie6 works great using this program, but ie7 runs so slow that it makes it unusable.

November 30, 2007 7:52 AM
gw said:

for some reason, myspace is horrible on mac os, on both safari and firefox, it load rediculously slow. On even old pc's, they load way faster than on my mac. does running IE for windows speed this up? anybody try it.

November 30, 2007 9:10 AM

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