Running IE under ReactOS

[qduxorious]

The company I work for uses a number of Hypertext Applications (hta)s that require Internet Explorer to run. As we seek ways to enable more of our employees to use non MS platforms, one essential is the ability to run IE. QEMU and ReactOS look to me like an excellent way to approach this. Does anyone know of a version of IE that will install and run under ReactOS? Thanks so much for any help you can give me here.

[ScoTTie]

All the IE versions ive tried (v4, v5, v5.5 and v6) from http://browsers.evolt.org/ dont work.

[loki1985]

apart from this running IE on ROS would most propably be not so legal, i think the EULA requires you to use MS WIN.

[fuzz]

well i have a "fixed" version of IE7, im going to try it again after i install it natively because it was too slow in vmware player to even try. But the install did start.

[qduxorious]

apart from this running IE on ROS would most propably be not so legal, i think the EULA requires you to use MS WIN.

This may well be (I've not read the EULA). If it is true, would that also be an issue for someone running IE with Wine or Crossover?

[nightshade]

Hi guys, i just took my copy of IE5 and looked for the eula and I found two. One says nothing about using IE on other OSs (or under wine), but the other on tells that it's not allowd to do so.

The first on is in the file helpcont.cab, the other one in wpie5x86.cab.

The two links are (all in german):
mitglied.lycos.de/darkfoe/files/eula.txt
mitglied.lycos.de/darkfoe/files/ieeula.txt

[loki1985]

i think the one which is presented upon installation is the important one...

[reub2000]

IE works on wine and crossover office. Why not use crossover office?

[loki1985]

since it is a proprietary product, maybe?!

anyway, COO is linux-only, so out of scope

[qduxorious]

IE works on wine and crossover office. Why not use crossover office?

There are basically 2 reasons. 1) We hope to roll this out in a way that hundreds of people could use. Thus, we really want it to be all Open Source, partly to save money and partly because we've burned our proprietary bridges and 2) Maybe it is a personal matter of preference, but I really like creating a virtual machine with qemu and running ReactOS in it It's just neat!

[menn]

The company I work for uses a number of Hypertext Applications (hta)s that require Internet Explorer to run. As we seek ways to enable more of our employees to use non MS platforms, one essential is the ability to run IE.

between the legal and technical issues i think you'd have an easier time adapting your hta's to mozilla than ie to ros. are they ajax? i suppose they will be. are they activex? ros will download a mozilla activex control but i know nothing about it. good luck.

[steveh]

Technical:
i'm not so enthousiastic about using the IE in Reactos. Why:
IE is subject to a lot of security issues, which often exist a long time before patched by MS.
Patching IE in Reactos would be a problem istself, because windows-update would most probably NOT work "on the fly".

Legal:
maybe EULA says only windows users are entitled to install freeware IE. But wether this point in the EULA is legally valid or not, largely depends on varying national legislations. I suppose in USA the EULA is valid as is, but in the EU legally restricting the use of IE to a certain OS, is illegal itself.
This said, i'm nethertheless AGAINST using IE in Reactos also for legal reasons, because the project is aimed on opensource and GPL, so a "mainstream compenent" like a web browser should not be promoted for Reactos, when it is proprietary closed-source.

HTA's:
should rather be implemented in Mozilla/Firefox, than forcing people to use an potentially unsecure browser for it. How important, how frequently used are HTA's?
Are HTA's themselves security-risks for any windows-compatible OS?
HTA compatibility to IE only, should be a strong incentive for webmasters to migrate to alternative solutions, shouldn't it?

[Mrkaras]

loki1985 wrote:
apart from this running IE on ROS would most propably be not so legal, i think the EULA requires you to use MS WIN.


This may well be (I've not read the EULA). If it is true, would that also be an issue for someone running IE with Wine or Crossover?

If it an issue for one it will surely be an issue for the other.

between the legal and technical issues i think you'd have an easier time adapting your hta's to mozilla than ie to ros. are they ajax? i suppose they will be. are they activex? ros will download a mozilla activex control but i know nothing about it. good luck.

I wern't sure what htas were either, they are not activeX or eaven related they are more like a html file with only VB script in them (probably javascript also, i don't know a lot abouth them) but firefox has no ability to open them, only IE. They run just like a stand alone program - no IE toolbars or menus.

There are basically 2 reasons. 1) We hope to roll this out in a way that hundreds of people could use. Thus, we really want it to be all Open Source, partly to save money and partly because we've burned our proprietary bridges and 2) Maybe it is a personal matter of preference, but I really like creating a virtual machine with qemu and running ReactOS in it It's just neat!

If you want it to be entirely open source you may have to find another way, is it reanasable to convert these htas to stanalone progrrams (re-write them), I don't know how big and how many of them are involved? otherwise, if legal IE will work sooner or later.

[reactux]

i thoat ie ran in wine
http://www.winehq.com/images/shots/full/wine_1.png (official wine screenshot)

[Dr. Fred]

i thoat ie ran in wine

That does not nessarily mean that it runs in reactos.