Internet Explorer on Linux

One of the biggest pains when designing a website is ensuring cross-browser compatibility. When it comes to HTML this is not too much of a problem, however javascript and CSS are. The layout in one browser may look completely different in another. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is not very CSS compliant, so it is always a good idea to test a design in as many websites as possible.

However, this is not always so easy if a web browser, in particular Internet Explorer, is unavailable for the operating system you use, which is the case for users of Linux, BSD and any other non-Windows OS.

Fortunately, though, for Linux users there is a solution:

ies4linux. It’s a script for installing several versions of Internet Explorer (5, 5.5, 6 and 7) and they can co-exist alongside each as they are installed to their own “Windows environment”.

The option to install Internet Explorer 7 won’t be immediately obvious when running the ies4linux script, but click on advanced and you’ll find the option at the bottom of the dialogue. Alternatively, you can specify installation of IE7 from the command line:

./ies4linux --install-ie7

(This assumes the current directory contains the script.)

You won’t have the IE7 user interface, as the IE6 one is used instead, however importantly IE7 will be used as the rendering engine and this will allow you to check that your website displays fine in Internet Explorer, as well as Firefox and Opera.