Testing your website in IE on a Mac
If you need to test your website/webapp in Microsoft Internet Explorer and are not developing on a Windows machine this is a solution that worked well for me:
- Install VirtualBox
- Download official Microsoft images of Windows with IE.
- Extract the .exe file(s) using the unix unrar tool.
- Follow these steps by Phil Brown for setting up Windows in VirtualBox.
- Boot in Windows Safe mode, set the clock to something in 2010 and disable internet time sync.
- Disable VirtualBox clock sync by running:
vboxmanage setextradata <vmname> "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled" "1" - I switched the VirtualBox network adapter to "Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop" and used the PRO2KXP.exe driver (download link)
You should use the VirtualBox snapshot feature after you are done, so you don't get into trouble with the 3 day activation limit.
Sources:
- http://blog.philipbrown.id.au/2009/03/internet-explorer-application-compatibility-vpc-images-under-virtualbox/
- https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16616
- http://rickguyer.com/virtualbox-disable-time-sync-between-host-and-client/
UPDATE: @ayrtonbe pointed out that all of the above has already been automated in the awesome ievms.sh script.
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