macOS How hard would it be to port Internet Explorer?

[Sic]

currently, i only have VPC installed on my powerbook for one thing - testing websites in Internet Explorer. as you can imagine, this is a bit of a pain in the ass, and i was wondering if anyone knows whether it's being done, or if it'd even be possible?

a job for our own Mac programmers (or a nice sourceforge project) maybe?

 

[gekko513]

It would be impossible to port since no one has access to the source code, and even if someone had, it would be an awful lot of work, and it wouldn't include all features (like Active X).

Now having it run on top of a system emulation layer, like Darwine, on the other hand, is possible, but that's also an awful lot of work. Luckily that's what the Darwine project seems to be doing (a lot of work). We can just wait and hope for some public releases soon.

 

[DavidLeblond]

It would be impossible to port since no one has access to the source code, and even if someone had, it would be an awful lot of work, and it wouldn't include all features (like Active X).

Active X is a feature? I always thought it was a bug. huh you learn something new every day.

Isn't there pages on the net that will show you what your page looks like in IE? If it wasn't early morning I'd look myself. Maybe later...

 

[reh]

Isn't there pages on the net that will show you what your page looks like in IE? If it wasn't early morning I'd look myself. Maybe later...

Yes, but they're not very useful for testing mouseovers, menus, etc... The one's I've seen just take a screenshot.

 

[SpookTheHamster]

IE came as standard on macs until quite recently. I'm sure there must be someone on MR with it that you could get it from.

 

[reh]

IE came as standard on macs until quite recently. I'm sure there must be someone on MR with it that you could get it from.

It's not even remotely close to IE for windows though.

 

[Sic]

IE came as standard on macs until quite recently. I'm sure there must be someone on MR with it that you could get it from.

the version for Mac is practically a port of IE 5.5, which people should've stopped using at least 6 years ago! it's not really the extras (ie. activeX and such like) that i'm after...it just want something that emulates the way IE interprets code and acts upon it. the link gekko513 posted looks the most promising so far, when they get a working installer out for PPC, it should be perfect - providing it works

 

[mduser63]

IE for the Mac uses a completely different rendering engine (Tasman) than IE for Windows, therefore it's not useful for testing webpages rendering in Windows IE.

As for a port of IE6 for Windows, I think Darwine is the closest we're likely to get to that. Of course, I don't mind firing up VPC when I need to test a site in Windows.

 

[Sic]

As for a port of IE6 for Windows, I think Darwine is the closest we're likely to get to that. Of course, I don't mind firing up VPC when I need to test a site in Windows.

i dont mind either, i'd rather that than use windows full-time, but it's hardly ideal...i really hope Darwine ends up being successful in that aspect

 

[Palad1]

It'd be hard, and stupid to port it to Mac OS X.

Especially since one can just use an intel mac and tinker with Wine

 

[janey]

If you REALLY need to, check out browsercam.com
Read about it on a mailing list, tried out the VNC, not a shabby idea if you really need to test it on multiple OSs but can't afford a separate machine and you're sick of VPC.