Why would you want to do something like install Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 on Apple’s OS X? Well, the sad truth is that IE6 is still the most prevalent web browser in the world, and web designers-even the Mac kind-can’t afford to start ignoring it yet. Unsurprisingly, the trick to getting IE to run on OS X is based on IEs4Linux, a tool with the same purpose, but for Linux.

PREREQUISITES:
– DarwinPorts (which requires XCode)
– X11 (I used Apple’s, from the install CD)

Next:

1. Download [url=http://homepage.mac.com/spullara/wine-0.9.7-mac-i386.tar.bz2]http://homepage.mac.com/spullara/wine-0.9.7-mac-i386.tar.bz2[/url]

2. Extract its contents into /Library

3. Add /Library/Wine/bin to your path (“export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Wine/bin” in the shell)

4. Run ‘wine’ in the shell to ensure that it’s working. It’s okay if it gives you errors, as long as it runs.

5. Go to [url=http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/news/]http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/news/[/url] and download beta5 (beta6 didn’t work for me).

6. Extract the contents anywhere (e.g. to your Desktop) and then use the shell to cd into it (e.g., “cd /Users/bupkis/Desktop/ies4linux”)

7. Try running ./ies4linux. It will probably give you an error about needing certain dependencies (cabextract, wget, etc). Use DarwinPorts to get anything you need (e.g., “sudo port install cabextract”).

8. Once it runs without dependency issues, follow the instructions. For the locale step, I had to manually enter “EN-US” — pressing ENTER to use the default didn’t work. Also, I only installed IE6; I didn’t try installing the IE 5.x versions.

9. Run X11.app

10. In xterm, run ‘bin/ie6’ (i.e., /Users/you/bin/ie6). You may need to add /Library/Wine/bin to your path for xterm.

11. After a stream of crazy output, hopefully you’ll see IE6 pop open in all its “glory”

installer script from[url=http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/index-en.html] IEs4Linux[/url]

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Filed under: Apple - @ June 29, 2006 8:28 pm