Edmonds Commerce Blog

Ubuntu Linux is undoubtedly the most successful desktop version of linux available today. It has managed to tempt across many dedicated windows users with its easy installation procedure, comprehensive bundle of applications including open office and firefox, its greater security and reduced vulnerability to internet viruses and malware. And of course the fact that it is free to download and install.

For a web designer, it is nice to have a sleek desktop environment to code in whilst being able to run a full LAMP stack web server as the localhost – meaning that designing and developing web sites is a breeze.

However, there are times when you simply need to check that a design is going to work with Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser is bundled with windows and is therefore the most popular web browser at the moment. However as a web designer it causes problems as it often behaves erratically or unexpectedly. For this reason a web designer always needs to make sure that they check their designs in Internet Explorer.

Another reason that Ubuntu users may need to use Internet Explorer is to log into certain sites which are not compatible with anything other than Internet Explorer. This is a real pet hate as it is real sign of laziness on the part of the web designers not to ensure that their web sites are accessible by all web browsers. Unfortunately the sites that tend to be like this are the ones that you really need, such as online banking sites. Its probably something to do with sloppy handling of ssl secure and insecure content, but I am not sure on that one.

Anyway – to save you having to maintain a windows installation and reboot everytime you need to check something in Internet Explorer – there is the excellent IEs 4 Linux package. This great package allows you to easily install Internet Explorer under Ubuntu (or any other version of Linux).

You need to have WINE installed and working, and also have the cabextractor working. Both of these packages are available in the syntaptic package manager in Ubuntu.

Related Resources

http://novicenotes.net/2006/08/04/ie_on_linux_wine/

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-run-microsoft-internet-explorer-7-6-55-51-in-linux

http://alternativenayk.wordpress.com/2006/11/27/internet-explorer-on-linux-help-for-xfld-ubuntu/

http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2006/04/install-internet-explorer-6-on-linux

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