I implemented some touch ups to the design of the Drupal.hu site recently, and although Edit Illyés (one of the top contributors in our local community) noticed that something is not right in Internet Explorer 6, we did not have a chance to look into it for some time. So finally, this became my opportunity to grab and test IEs4OSX, the brother of IEs4Linux.
Part of my Dock with IE6
Thankfully, there are people, who agree that Internet Explorer testing should not require a full virtual machine running with all the Microsoft Windows operating system booted up, let alone a completely different machine with this OS installed. IEs4OSX allows users to use the Darwine (Wine for OSX) system to run Internet Explorer versions from 5.0 to 7.0. Although the 7.0 version is still admittedly in beta stage. It run fine for me on Ubuntu with IEs4Linux, but my Mac runs on high CPU loads with it, and no page load ever finishes.
After all, this fine project (and some CSS modifications) saved Drupal.hu from going with the broken layout for IE6 users through the holidays.
I haven't tested IEs4OSX but
I haven't tested IEs4OSX but a thing to be aware of when running IE under WINE on Linux is that it doesn't use the real Windows fonts by default, so you don't get a pixel perfect representation of how the page would render under Windows.
I never thought of the fonts
I never thought of the fonts being different but that is true. I've tested it a little and at least you can see the big bugs in layout and inconsistencies that IE 6 and IE 7 introduce. It is truly a powerful tool in the toolbox and another reason that makes developing on the Mac the way to go!
Req. Intel CPU
Great project, just what I was looking for, to bad is only run on Intel. Anyone seen a PPC compiled version out there or is that mission impossible? Are there any free sites that hosts a IE 6 and 7 so you can test your sites?
Mission Impossible
It's not feasible to run Internet Explorer 6 on a PowerPC Mac because Darwine / Wine only adds an API layer to OS X. IE6 still uses x86 binary code. So on a PowerPC Mac you're stuck with something like Microsoft VirtualPC.
As far as I'm aware of,
As far as I'm aware of, IEs4OSX installer gives you an option of whether not antialiasing should be turned on. Not choosing this option might increase the pixel accuracy a bit. The real accuracy is left to the font itself (i.e. whether not the font metrics are the same).
So now you can run ie6 on a
So now you can run ie6 on a mac but not on windows Vista! crazy...
and sucks if you're coding CSS for clients on the daily.
Nice!! thanks for posting
Nice!! thanks for posting this. I currently have 2 installs of Windows just to test IE6 & 7. Once all the issues with this are worked out, I'll have to switch over.
I have 4 Gigs of RAM but I can still come close to it's limits with all my tools open. :)
There's a new way to test IE
There's a new way to test IE 6, 7, 8 and 9 on Mac OSX. Free, and officially supported by Microsoft: http://www.xairon.net/2011/06/testing-ie6-7-8-and-9-on-mac-os-x/