Internet Explorer for / on Mac: Test Bed Edition

Sometimes you have companies that use and rely on dinosaur software archetypes. When you end up working for one, using a MacBook Air, iPhone or iPad just makes life that much more difficult. In this example, Microsoft's ASP and Sabre Corp's reliance on IE.

Good thing there's Google. Looking up testing platforms and easy to use one click solutions that enable you to run Internet Explorer resulted in OS X Daily's post. From the looks of it, it's been properly maintained a dis current. Along with the amazing people contributing on GitHub, we have the answer you've been waiting for.

I chose NOT to install every iteration of IE but instead went with IE 9. One of my classmates with a PC was still running into a compatibility problem with IE 11 but I guess that's not surprising. The over reliance on "Compatibility Mode" is out of proportion these days. What's the point? It just doesn't work.

If your interested in the full details, head over to OS X Daily or just follow these shortcut instructions.

  1. Download & Install VirtualBox. http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
  2. Launch the Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
  3. Since I decided that IE 9 works well, copy and past this into the Terminal Window and the download will begin.:

    curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | IEVMS_VERSIONS="9" bash


  4. Launch VirtualBox and boot the Windows & Internet Explorer partition.

There are lot of little details that are left out e.g. Admin Password = "Password1" [without the quotes] and the fact that the installation takes 11GB for a single instance / version of Internet Explorer. Have fun but I guess I wouldn't associate this process with "fun."

I wanted to call this article "ASP is the new Flash", but being that ASP will continue to be used in the foreseeable future, we'll have to endure. 1

  • The use of ASP pages with Internet Information Services (IIS) is currently supported on all supported versions of IIS. The use of ASP pages will be supported on Windows 8 for a minimum of 10 years from the Windows 8 release date.