The XSite Blog

I'm a netbook fan. I've got one of the smallest ones - the EEE PC 900A. Atom-powered, no hard drive (all solid state), and my current favorite piece of hardware. Mine runs Linux. The whole point of a netbook is web-based applications - cloud computing - not installable software. Since I do it all on the web, I don't care about compatibility, or operating systems. The Linux/Windows/Mac debate is dead, as far as I'm concerned.

But I do use XSites. So, do I get another netbook just for Microsoft Internet Explorer? Perhaps. But not while I've got a choice. And I've got several choices:

In the previous blog post, I went over several methods of managing your alamode real estate XSite with Firefox. In this post, I'll hit the main methods of managing with Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) but in Linux!

IES4Linux: This method uses Wine, a well known Windows Emulator for Linux, but it streamlines the approach mercifully. In the words one one reviewer, "No boring setup processes. No Wine complications. Just one easy script and you'll get three IE versions to test your Sites." Here's the page.

Microsoft actually helps: Serdar Yegulalp explains how to "download a virtual machine image from Microsoft that contains a preactivated installation of Windows XP, preloaded with your choice of Internet Explorer versions."

Manual Methods: other methods involve manually setting up windows or IE in a virtual machine or Wine.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind that alamode doesn't support these methods (neither do we, so don't ask :-), so if you have an XSite issue, you'd better have a buddy check it in a supported, native version of Microsoft Windows to verify it occurs everywhere before calling technical support. That said, if you're adventurous and interested enough, it looks quite doable. Comment on this post if you've already been down one of these roads (or have another method) and have had success.

Macintosh: incidentally, some of these methods (e.g. virtual machine) should work fairly well in Macintosh and other OSs too.