[cw-discuss] IE support, etc

[James E. LaBarre]

Jeremy White wrote:
> However, the other thing that's important to understand is that
> most people aren't really talking about Internet Explorer.
> 
> Often, people want IE because they need to run the
> embedded Windows Media Player, or because they need to run
> the Siebel application suite.  Those applications are big and
> hairy applications in their own right - they just happen to be
> wrapped in IE.  Hence, the task of supporting IE is really
> 'support IE and every ActiveX or COM component ever built' - and
> that task is not a quick or simple one.


That's the major reason I install MSIE in CX-Linux.  While I know the 
AOL client won't run under CXO, it's one of my periodic "tests" with my 
CVS builds of Wine.  I *have* gotten the old Gecko-based test version of 
AOL 7.0 (never officially released) to work in Wine, but 9.0 is needed. 
  And before you ask; no, I'm not using the client for dial-up, there's 
some chat rooms & parenting resources on AOL that still aren't available 
through the web interface, and the Windows client is needed for those.

The other 2 IE-requiring apps I've dealt with are eBay offline auction 
posting tools (TurboLister, and MrPoster, which also requires .NET). 
Since I doubt any Linux-compatible apps will ever be forthcoming for 
that, I'm stuck with Windows apps for that.  Eventually I'd like to get 
my brother off Windows, but eBay is the major barrier to that (offline 
tools are needed, since he doesn't have broadband, and DSL won't be in 
his area for a while)