I have a new laptop with Ubuntu that has the firefox browser but I have
an important program that will only work with internet explorer's browser, how can I install internet explorer on my laptop to work this program.

ies4Linux

You probably could still use Firefox for the site, just use the user agent switcher and tell firefox to report as IE on windows for that site.

BTW, what is the program or website you are trying to use?

or run a windows vm or use crossover office

I am trying to use a beckett.com website and the site administrator says it will not work with firefox only ie

The website loaded fine for me in Firefox, though I am running windows at the moment.

Is there no option to explain to the admin that something like 20% now use Firefox?

Is this the site?
http://beta.beckett.com/

Seems to work for me......

i have a working storefront on beckett.com and although i can get into beckett.com, I cannot make changes or add items to it because the administrator says it will only work with ie. i'm sorry if i am not really clear on explaining my problem. appreciate your helping.

He might probably be using some activex or asp stuff that will only work in IE, I guess. The easiest way around it is to install IE in wine, using ies4linux as someone pointed above. If that's not enough then I'd go for the VM solution if running that site is really necessary.

If the author refuses to support anything that's not Windows IE then I would just find another site, but that's just me.

When you sign up with them, what instructions to they give for how to create and maintain the "storefront"? Assuming that you can do what you need to using IE, what is it that you CANNOT do from Firefox.
(What I am looking for is WHY it won't work with Firefox.)

As already stated, you may have no choice but to get something like ies4linux.

I looked thru the manual of my website program and I had to adjust the security active x to be enabled in ie. That is probably why it only works on ie.
I have read the website on wine and it sounds like that would work for me but I'm not sure I would know how to program it if I download it and how I would then download ie. I may have to seek professional help on this one. Appreciate all your answers so far and I have already learned what vm and wine are!!! computer for dummies I am. Please keep your suggestions coming as I will master this new program. Regards Anita

Firefox has a addon where it emulates IE
FF>tools>addons>get extensions
search for IE

Someone above gave you a link to ies4linux. Just follow it, download ies4linux, uncompress it and run it. Before that, you only need to make sure that wine is installed (that can be done using the package manager for your distro). You can ask if you need help with either of the two steps. I think that they are simple enough so you shouldn't really have any big problem to do it yourself if you want.


There are lots of IE related extensions, but unless there's one that reimplements the whole ActiveX API (I am no expert but I seriously doubt it) that's not going to help you.

The only one that could work is IE Tab, because it can embed IE inside of Firefox. However that's not gonna help us in Linux for obvious reasons (the obvious reason is that there's no IE in Linux, so it can't be embedded).

I guess that the "emulation" you speak about is some kind of user agent switcher. That will only tell the web server that the browser is IE instead of Firefox (it will lie). But that will not magically add non-existing capabilities like ActiveX into Firefox. ActiveX is only available in IE, and since it's a proprietary technology, that's not going to change.

I downloaded the IEtab and it does enable my program in IE but it still won't let me access to change information in my website. Is there any way that I can enable the active X from the IR tab I downloaded. Appreciate all your help so far. The administrator of the Beckett website told me it would only work with internet explorer and I believe that is because we enabled the active X settings. Please advise if you have any other suggestions. Thanks Anita

If the problem is truly that the web uses ActiveX (I have no way to check). The only solution would be to tell him to drop ActiveX, and use a standard technology like PHP, that will work on ALL the browsers. ActiveX is disliked for a number of reasons overall involving security, and will never be available on anything that's not IE. It's an MS technology and it's not available for anyone that's not MS. Period.

Anyway, if you are running IE inside Firefox, then I assume you are in Windows (right?) so it's not a Linux related problem any longer.

Maybe if you get the Mozilla ActiveX control (see section 6):
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/...age=HOWTO+Wine