Internet Explorer 8 on Linux with Wine
13:20About Internet Explorer 8
Windows
Internet Explorer 8 (abbreviated IE8) is the latest web browser
developed by Microsoft in the long running Internet Explorer browser
series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP,
Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and Windows
7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available. It is the successor to
Internet Explorer 7, released in 2006, and is the default browser for
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems except in Europe.
IE8's global market share is estimated to be about 18-20%.
According
to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, Cascading
Style Sheets, and Ajax support were its priorities for Internet
Explorer 8.
Standards mode
Internet
Explorer 8's main rendering mode, known as standards mode, has improved
support for various web standards, especially CSS, compared to Internet
Explorer 7 and earlier versions.
The web standards supported by
IE8 include the following:
HTML, including the HTML object fallback and the abbr and
elements
Data: URIs
CSS level 1 is fully supported. CSS level 2 is mostly supported however the CSS level 2 implementation does diverge from the CSS2 specification on over 50 counts. CSS level 3 is partially supported.
DOM storage
Partial HTML 5 support, including cross-document messaging
Selectors APIs
DOM, that brings it in line with implementations in other browsers. Attributes and properties in DOM objects are now handled differently, and the behavior of the getAttribute, setAttribute and removeAttribute modifiers have been changed to match the behavior of other browsers.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification for enhanced accessibility in Ajax-based rich Internet applications.
However, IE8 does not support some
other W3C standards.
Wine
configuration
This is with a clean configuration
directory, with no other applications or games installed.
Linux
Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Windows version emulated: XP
Wine
version tested: 1.1.32
" browseui="native, builtin"
"crypt32"="native,
builtin"
"gdiplus"="native"
"hhctrl.ocx"="native, builtin"
"hlink"="native,
builtin"
"iernonce"="native, builtin"
"iexplore.exe"="native,
builtin"
"itircl"="native, builtin"
"itss"="native, builtin"
"jscript"="native,
builtin"
"mlang"="native, builtin"
"mshtml"="native, builtin"
"msimtf"="native,builtin"
"msxml3"="native,builtin"
"riched20"="native,builtin"
"riched32"="native,builtin"
"secur32"="native,
builtin"
"shdoclc"="native, builtin"
"shdocvw"="native, builtin"
"shlwapi"="native,
builtin"
"url"="native, builtin"
"urlmon"="native, builtin"
"usp10"="native,
builtin"
"uxtheme"="native,builtin"
"wininet"="builtin"
"wintrust"="native,
builtin"
"xmllite"="native, builtin"
You will also need to copy a number of DLL's from a Windows XP machine
and place them in /system32 as winetricks doesn't provide these DLL's at
this time.
msctf.dll
msimtf.dll
uxtheme.dll
Winetricks
Now download winetricks if you don't
already have it and install the following Windows redistributables.
corefonts
gdiplus
msls31
msxml3
riched20
riched32
tahoma
IE 8 install in Wine
Download Windows
Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP from Microsoft and save it to
your home directory.
Now open a terminal and run $ wine
IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe
The IE 8 install should now
start, I didnt select the Windows security updates in my install.
Conclusion and known problems
While
IE 8 will run and render web pages just fine there is still a large number of problems/bugs that
remain to be resolved before you will want to use the browser on Linux
on a daily basis.
Bookmarks and RSS feeds don't currently work
and their is a number of problems related to comctl32.dll for example
the forward and backward buttons background isn't painted and even worse
if you select Help the browser will lock up. I also had a number of
lock ups when trying to save Internet options.
Their are also
major problems with comdlg32.dll the address and search bars dont accept
input at this time, so what ive done is set google as my homepage and
then go from there.
You can easily do this in the user.reg file,
just change the start page to what you want your home page to be. Here
is what I have as a example :
[Software\\Microsoft\\Internet
Explorer\\Main]
"Start Page"="http://www.google.com/ncr"
You
can however view web pages, and navigate around a site to see how well
it renders with IE 8 if your a web developer.
One way to help
support further development of Internet Explorer is to purchase CrossOver Office
and then vote for IE 8 as the app that you would most like to see
supported in a future release.