IEs 4 Linux News

Hi everyone! Here is beta 6. This release fixes some important bugs and adds some final features.

Changelog

• New: Kommander GUI finished (advanced dialog)
• New: IE7 proxy configuration hack (see below)
• Improved: download output
• Improved: other programs should find IE now (as Jim suggested here)
• Improved: all temp files now go to ~/.ies4linux/tmp to avoid complications
• Other bug fixes (1, 2, 3, 4)

About IE7 proxy configuration hack

The problem: since IE7 is not currently supported by Wine, IEs4Linux does a very dirty installation. We use IE6 user interface and replace its rendering engine with IE7’s one. This cause a problem: we can’t open some dialogs like javascript:alert, or Find (Ctrl+F) or Internet Options. The most annoying effect is that users can’t configure proxy settings.

The hack: as noted many times by Jim Burns, we can “pause” installation before installing IE7, launch IE6, configure proxy, and continue with the installation. So, this is now an “official hack” 😀

Here is what you have to do:

• Run IEs4Linux with this flag enabled: ./ies4linux --hack-ie7-proxy-settings
• After IE6 is installed, it will open. Go to Internet Options dialog and configure your proxy
• Close IE6 and IE7 installation should proceed
• Final step: comment here what you think about his hack and if it worked for you

And just a final note: the command-line option is large to remember everybody that this is a hack. 😛
About programs translations

I updated our online translation system, so all translations need upgrades (guys, I promise no more major updates to translations soon 😛 ).

But, as I said before, my main concern now is how these localizations are being displayed in so different languages and encodings. I’m testing everything here in my Ubuntu Edgy box but I think some of you may have problems (specially those that don’t use UTF8).

So, I need feedback on this. Please tell me if IEs4Linux user interface works well in your language. If it does not work, run: ./ies4linux --no-localization. This will force an English interface.

I guess some locales like Hebrew will simply not work… but I need feedback 🙂

Final comments

– I need feedback about Menu and Desktop icons installed using xdg-utils. Is this working? [Wine WWN-Issue 321 has an interesting discussion about this]

– In the past I was using the ‘source’ command to import files (and we had some compatibility issues). Now I use the ‘period operator’. Did this fix compatibility problems? (OSX has this operator? other shells?)

– Also WWN-322 has a mention to ‘ies4linux’ when talking about IE Developer Toolbar Beta 3. I think this is the first “official” mention to ies4linux on winehq.org. 🙂

– Thanks to translators: Eugene Schava, lebinh, Milan Cvejic, fondacio, Roque Pinel, lotko, Thomas Björklund, Peter, Edo Jerkovic, Zekonology.

You know how important something you did is when something like this happens. (and I hope this is the only link to this fake site in the entire Internet)

That’s funny. IEs4Linux is a free project, that today, after two years of work, generates some small revenue for me (from Google adsense and spontaneous donations). But its intention was never to make me rich (hello, we’re talking about a small, free and open source project!). And now someone that think that’s better than me (and you, users) try to earn money without doing anything.

And that’s something that make me proud too. This project grew a lot since 2004. Many people use it. Many people support it. Many companies use it in a daily base. It’s something nice that I did and many people like!

When I created the name “IEs4Linux” I searched for it on Google to make sure it was unique. And I keep tracking how many Sites talk about it since them (I remember a blog post about our first hundred references on Google 🙂 ). Today you get 281 thousand references. It’s amazing! And some people try to get easy money from that success…

Anyway, I never wanted to register ies4linux.com. I was postponing registering ies4linux.org until today (I never thought it’s a big thing having an exclusive domain). So, ies4linux.org is ours now to avoid some other name hijacking…

—-

Changing the subject: I know I’m very late with our new beta version. I had many things to do these days but I’m already finishing beta 6. I fixed many bugs you said before, introduced some new features (like an IE7 proxy configuration workaround), but it’s not finished yet. I’ll try to release beta6 asap 🙂

Let me answer some comments from beta5 post (that’s closed for new comments):

– Jim: ‘wineserver -w’ simply does not work here (Ubuntu). I know that ‘killall wine’… maybe a future version should keep pids and kill only that pids

– mbvlist: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I guess IE Developer Toolbar Beta 3 is for Windows XP. Since IEs4Linux uses Win98 for IE6, it may cause some bugs. By the way, should we start to install IE6 using a WinXP bottle (like IE7)? Or should we keep IE6 running in 98?

– mbvlist: About select infinite z-index bug. I made a very simple test case with the technique that I normally use. And IEs4Linux renders everything correctly. See this.

– Zero: could you send to me the output of the following commands? ‘echo $LANG’ and ‘locale’.  I’m very worried about IEs4Linux localization in 2.5. We didn’t have any problem before because IEs4Linux 2.0 is 100% terminal. I’m still trying to figure out a way to handle all those localizations without problems…

This week I finished our latest redesign. I made a cleaner design with some new features, such as the top bar that is visible everywhere (wiki, blog, forum). Also the right column has links to Beta version and Last News (many people didn’t know before that we had a beta version…). I hope you liked the new design.

The most exciting thing for me wasn’t the site itself, but how IEs4Linux helped me doing it. There was a long time since I made a full design thinking about IE compatibility etc. When I started this new design I decided to make IE versions as close as possible to the “original” version. And usinf IEs4Linux it’s a lot easier to make web design using Linux.

Using conditional comments I fixed almost all IE bugs (like simulating :after and :before with JavaScritpt). I noted also that IE7 has less bugs and PNG transparency works fine (actually most problem with IE<=6 was PNGs, that I replaced with GIFs, JPGs). So, I was happy to see how easy is to develop a Site using this project I created 🙂

And I noted that Linux is the most exciting web development platform. What I used: Inkscape and Gimp for design, Kate for coding and IEs4Linux+Firefox+Konqueror+Opera to test everything.

About ads: I changed the ads position from right to left (Google says it’s better) and removed top ads. I think that the ads are less intrusive now, but ads are always intrusive. You know, this is an open source project so I have to generate some revenue from ads and donations… so close your eyes to them (or adblock them) if they bother your 😀