How to install Internet Explorer (multiple versions)?

Question

I am developing one site which has chat feature in Rails. I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I need to check that the site is IE9 because the chat feature using socket io of HTML5. I want to know that how to install IE9 in Ubuntu. I have looked at Chrome and Firefox extensions but if any standalone is available then please give me suggestion.

Solution 1

Microsoft has created some customized Windows VHDs with the purpose of allowing web designers to test websites in Internet Explorer 10, 9, 8 and 7, for Free for 30 days:

You can download the virtual machine images from this website:

• Free Virtual Machines From IE8 to MS Edge

From the site:

1. Download the SFX and all RAR files for the VM (smaller VMs may not have files with RAR extension). In each set below that contains a split archive, the provided text file (.txt) contains URLs to all files in the set, and this can be used directly with the 'wget' command in Linux. From the terminal, enter wget -i [URL TO TEXT FILE]. For Windows XP single file downloads, use wget [URL TO DOWNLOAD FILE] instead.

Example 1:

wget -i https://az412801.vo.msecnd.net/vhd/IEKitV1_Final/VirtualBox/Linux/IE8_Win7/IE8.Win7.For.LinuxVirtualBox_2.txt

Example 2:

wget https://az412801.vo.msecnd.net/vhd/IEKitV1_Final/VirtualBox/Linux/IE6_XP/IE6.WinXP.For.LinuxVirtualBox.sfx

1. After the download of all files for a set is complete, give the SFX file execute permission by typing chmod +x filename.sfx at the terminal.

2. Execute the SFX executable from the terminal with ./filename.sfx to expand the virtual machine to the current directory.

See also:

• Making Internet Explorer Testing Easier with new IE VMs - Rey Bango
• Free Official MSIE VM's for Linux and Mac | Hacker News

Solution 2

Is this for personal/normal use or for testing website development?

If it's for normal browsing, you can get winetricks. Then run

winetricks ie6

or

winetricks ie7

or

winetricks ie8

And it should install a barebones, just-functioning version of IE. It won't be the full thing though. You may find that running IE in VMWare Player or VirtualBox with their seamless integration may be a better choice.

If this is for testing web development, have a look at browsershots.org which can test the website for you in different browsers and versions.

Solution 3

The best option is to run IE from the VirtualBox. Some time ago Microsoft created some files to run IE 7, 8 and 9 for free from VirtualBox(no Windows license needed). Give it a try.

Quoted from Webupd8.org:

Microsoft has created some customized Windows VHDs with the purpose of allowing web designers to test websites in Internet Explorer 9, 8 and 7, for free. To make it easier to set up, xdissent has created a Mac OSX / Linux script that will download the required files, extract them, install the latest VirtualBox guest additions and so on.

Read more here. :)

Solution 4

You can install Internet Explorer, but as far as I know only versions 8 and below.

Here's how. I use PlayOnLinux, because it makes using WINE so much easier. If you don't have PlayOnLinux, install it from the Ubuntu Software Centre (if you want the latest version, go to the PlayOnLinux download page, click on "Ubuntu", and follow the instructions).

• Open PlayOnLinux. Wait a few seconds while it refreshes (the status bar at the bottom).
• Click on the big "+ Install" button. A new window opens.
• Click on the "Internet" button.
• Click on "Internet Explorer 8".
• Click on "Install".

• An installation wizard appears. Click Next; wait a bit.
• IE8 will start to install, asking you a question and then to accept the license terms. It will prompt you to install updates; clear this check-box and press Next.
• Wait a bit longer.
• When prompted, select "Restart now (recommended)". This will not restart your computer; instead, PlayOnLinux will simulate a Windows restart.

Now, you will have an Internet Explorer icon on your desktop and another within the PlayOnLinux window. You can double-click either of these to start IE8.

Note that the display will not precisely match that on Windows for several reasons, but at least it will give you IE8 on Ubuntu!

Solution 5

As of today (Sep 30, 2010 and Wine 1.3.3), IE 8 does not work in Wine. It will install and load, but it won't connect or render a page and the window will have a lot of visible glitches.

If it ever does work in the future, you will need to use the Wine1.3 packages from the Wine PPA.

To Install it, the simplest method is to use winetricks. If you've added the PPA and installed wine you should already have the winetricks package -- simply type winetricks ie8 to do the install.

If you're using different versions of Internet Explorer for web development, I highly recommend creating separate wineprefixes for each one. See my blog post: http://yokozar.org/blog/archives/236

View more solutions

Comments

[Eliah Kagan]

Why would it fail if you need 3D acceleration? VMware, like most other virtualization solutions, supports 3D acceleration, so long as you enable it in the VM configuration and have VMware Tools installed. Also, can you recommend a specific Firefox add-on to change the user agent text (and maybe link to it)?

[Mateng]

Sounds awesome.

[Ninad]

Hi @MichaelDurrant, I have tried to install IE8 on my Oracle VM VirtualBox, but I am getting an error while running curl command line. Can you please take a look at my question here?

[earthmeLon]

These images are very frustrating. They expire, forcing you to re-install the image at a very frequent rate.

[Wilf]

Wow... Microsoft nicely distributing something to Linux? Must be poison...

[Wilf]

Works very nicely, and apparently should last 90 days.... - manual page here.

[BrightIntelDusk]

adobe has shut down browserlab.adobe.com.

[Andrei Ionut-Adrian]

The above did not work for me on 14.04 ; the instructions provided did not result in a working executable . I installed rar and unrar then changed the extention for the sfx to rar and opened that in Archive Manager , then I was able to drag out the VBox ova file.

[Thorsten Niehues]

A comment about wine-prefix would also be nice (for Ubuntu 64 bit): Install: WINEPREFIX=$HOME/prefix32 WINEARCH='win32' wine ie8 Execute: WINEPREFIX=$HOME/prefix32 WINEARCH='win32' wine 'C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore' Tested with Ubuntu 14.04

[Thorsten Niehues]

IE is not working properly :(

[hayd]

How do you run it?

[m13r]

Following is suggested to handle the 90 days: These virtual machines expire after 90 days. We recommend setting a snapshot when you first install the virtual machine which you can roll back to later

[Dragon warrior]

browsershots.org is dying, also it lacks IE as of now