IE on a Mac

[sae]

I am considering purchasing a Mac, but seeing as I do web development and a lot of people use IE, it would important to be able to able to see what my pages look like in IE. So, can you get IE for mac, or what do you do?

[felgall]

New Macs can be set up for multiple operating systems so that you can choose OSX, Windows or Linux when you first turn the computer on and then run whichever operating system you selected. You should check that the one you are purchasing can run Windows as well as OSX before you buy it.

[sae]

Yes, I am aware of that, I was just hoping that I didn't have to install windows just to use IE.

[felgall]

Since IE only runs on Windows you need either native windows, windows running as a virtual machine under OSX, or a windows emulator that runs on OSX in order to be able to run it on a Mac.

[bathurst_guy]

There is [was-kinda outdated] an IE for Mac [I think it got up to v5.5], but it still renders stuff differently to IE on XP as does IE on 98 etc.

[felgall]

IE 5.5 for the Mac was declared officially dead in 2003 after many years of not being updated. It never worked the same as IE on windows anyway and so would be useless in checking for how a web page would look in IE on Windows even if you were trying to check how it looked in IE5 or 5.5

[bathurst_guy]

That is what I said.

[sae]

merci gentlemen

[russell]

If you do web development, you need to own a windows PC. It doesn't have to be your primary machine and u can pick up a cheap one, but you should be testing your stuff on Windows. And not just IE either. Test in FF for Windows as well. And maybe even Opera and NS.

[felgall]

A modern Mac is a perfectly suitable computer to run OSX, Windows, and Linux in a multiboot mode. It is in fact the only computer that can be confugured to allow you to run all three. Perhaps all web developers should look at getting a Mac so that they can test Safari as well IE, Firefox and opera (the big 4 browsers).