Ies4linux

From EpixStudios

Because most PCs purchased today come with MS Windows operating system and people don't like change, Internet Explorer (MSIE) is still the most commonly used browser on the web. So, when designing website layouts you need to be sure of how it will look when rendered with IE.

Microsoft obviously don't release IE for Linux, but it is possible to run the windows version through WINE. It's a bit of a hassle to set up manually, but luckily there is an installer called ies4linux that will download and install multiple versions of IE for you. Versions that ies4linux will install are 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 (and 7.0 in beta).

Gentoo has a package in portage, although the latest beta which includes 7.0 is masked so you need to unmask it

nano /etc/portage/package.unmask

insert the line:

app-emulation/ies4linux

emerge -av ies4linux

You then need to run the installer. KDE GUI:

ies4linux --gui kommander

or GTK:

ies4linux --gui gtk

Select the versions you wish to install - version 7.0 is hidden in 'Advanced'. The script will download all the required files and install them afterwards in you home directory.

IE7 failure to install

For me the installation failed at 99% downloading IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe. 'An error ocurred when downloading. Please run IEs4Linux again. Corrupted file: IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe' was the error given. I presume this was due to the file being updated by MS since the version of ies4linux was released.

To work around this I edited the file '/usr/lib/ies4linux/lib/files' which maps the downloads with MD5 sums and file sizes at the time of the release. The IE7 download was saved as '~/.ies4linux/downloads/IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe' so you can calculate it's new MD5 sum with

md5sum ~/.ies4linux/downloads/IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe

Now find the line starting with 'IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe' in '/usr/lib/ies4linux/lib/files' and replace the values for MD5 and filesize.

New file (as of 20/11/2007):

...
ie55sp2_9x.zip  3682543 b9a2553040c153129fd281872ff6b072
ie501sp2_9x.zip 3075922 0b04bb907a4ec53c2e16c36213b7c2a8
IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe       15452536        ea16789f6fc1d2523f704e8f9afbe906
Msie10.exe      1097728 adb4c9f286600bd2889d3f756a76318d
IE15I386.EXE    859648  fd65d27db16c70ec435243206fa780b8
...

Finally run the installer again and it should accept the IE7 installer.