How Functional is Wine's IE supposed to be?

SpawnHappyJake · Post by **SpawnHappyJake** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:39 am

I haven't said much about this, but Wine's Internet Explorer has never really worked as web browser.

I understand that the main purpose of Wine's Internet Explorer isn't to be a web browser, but to make Windows programs that require MS IE work.

That said, one of the Wine 1.4 release criteria is "Builtin iexplore, Gecko". So I figured I should ask, "How functional is Wine's IE supposed to be for Wine 1.4?"

I compiled Wine 1.4 rc1 from source, downloaded Gecko 1.4, and tested out Wine's Internet Explorer. Most buttons don't even do anything. I understand the running shell model of development where you basically have a bunch of place-holder code that reports "I'm not developed yet." Is that what's going on here? Shouldn't there at least be a popup that says "forward button not developed yet" or something, so people won't think it's a bug?

Anyways, it freezes up after just a little bit of use, View > toolbars > (Standard bar or Address bar) doesn't do anything, I can presumably add to favourites, but not access them from anywhere, the back button works on occasion, I am yet to see the forward button work, Stop and Refresh don't appear to do anything, Home actually does work, "File > new > Window" doesn't work, "File > open" sometimes works, Save and SaveAs both don't work, Print format doesn't do anything, print sometimes works, I've never seen print preview work, properties doesn't seem to do anything, and close works.

So yeah, just wondering if that's supposed to be the case. I was kind of hoping that all the buttons would at least do something in Wine 1.4, not that I would need Wine 1.4 as a browser, but it would be nice for the sake of completeness.

Jake

Post by **dimesio** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:45 am

http://bugs.winehq.org/buglist.cgi?quer ... ordssubstr

Post by **dimesio** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 10:57 am

SpawnHappyJake wrote: That said, one of the Wine 1.4 release criteria is "Builtin iexplore, Gecko".

No. Reread the wiki page. It's a "release feature." The release criteria are the DIB engine, RTL support, Xinput2 support, and the audio redesign.
http://wiki.winehq.org/WineReleaseCriteria

Dotan Cohen · Post by **Dotan Cohen** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 2:58 pm

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 08:39, SpawnHappyJake <[email protected]> wrote:

I understand that the main purpose of Wine's Internet Explorer isn't to be a web browser, but to make
Windows programs that require MS IE work.

From where is this information? Many of my nation's websites still,
especially government websites, require IE. I happen to have a Windows
virtual machine but I had assumed that IE on Wine would be a viable
alternative for those without a VM.

--
Dotan Cohen

Post by **dimesio** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 3:38 pm

Dotan Cohen wrote:I had assumed that IE on Wine would be a viable
alternative for those without a VM.

You assumed wrong.

Dotan Cohen · Post by **Dotan Cohen** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:54 pm

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 22:38, dimesio <[email protected]> wrote:

I had assumed that IE on Wine would be a viable
alternative for those without a VM.

You assumed wrong.

I see that. However, where is the intention posted by the OP stated in
the fine manual? I am not denying the fact, rather, I would like to
see it documented in order to retort when another idiot web dev tells
me to just use wine. Yes, I do write to most of the problematic sites.

--
Dotan Cohen

Guan · Post by **Guan** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 1:31 am

That being said, I hope that one day at least the wine IE will be able to handle bank login controls and such. You can't do online banking in China without being able to emulate the login features and activex controls from IE6. There are also some other popular programs that are hung up on this over here. It's the main stumbling block to switching most casual computer users over to linux.

Post by **dimesio** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 6:58 am

Guan wrote:That being said, I hope that one day at least the wine IE will be able to handle bank login controls and such. You can't do online banking in China without being able to emulate the login features and activex controls from IE6. There are also some other popular programs that are hung up on this over here. It's the main stumbling block to switching most casual computer users over to linux.

Wine's IE merely looks like IE6. Under the hood, it uses the same engine as Firefox. That's why websites and apps that rely on ActiveX controls need real IE installed to work in Wine.

Guan · Post by **Guan** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 7:33 am

In that case, I hope that bug fixing and implementation of IE6 continues in wine, so that someday the issues I addressed can be fixed. If they could, you could switch 95% of the chinese populace to linux and they would be ok with it. Then again, with that many people switching the chinese virus writers might start writing for linux... have to think about that one some more.

jjmckenzie · Post by **jjmckenzie** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:11 am

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 5:33 AM, Guan <[email protected]> wrote:

In that case, I hope that bug fixing and implementation of IE6 continues in wine, so that someday the issues I
addressed can be fixed. If they could, you could switch 95% of the chinese populace to linux and they would be ok
with it. Then again, with that many people switching the chinese virus writers might start writing for linux... have to
think about that one some more.

Please keep in mind that Microsoft is NOT maintaining IE6 anymore. I
would expect the project to attempt to incorporate functions from IE
that are not in the Gecko engine and from newer versions of IE.

James

Guan · Post by **Guan** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:39 am

What I am meaning is the functionality be eventually implemented into wine. I have no love for IE6 and I back microsoft 100% for finally killing support for it. It is amazing to see how much stuff over here is still so dependent on IE6. There is some hope though. Most of the banking controls will still work using IE7,8 and 9. Also, some banks are starting to offer FF compatible controls. Still a long way to go though.

jjmckenzie · Post by **jjmckenzie** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 11:39 am

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Guan <[email protected]> wrote:

What I am meaning is the functionality be eventually implemented into wine. I have no love for IE6 and I back
microsoft 100% for finally killing support for it. It is amazing to see how much stuff over here is still so dependent on
IE6. There is some hope though. Most of the banking controls will still work using IE7,8 and 9. Also, some banks
are starting to offer FF compatible controls. Still a long way to go though.

I don't know if or when missing functionality will be added, but if
you look at Wine's Bug reporting area (Bugzilla) there are bugs filed
for missing functionality. If the function you need is not there,
please add a bug report. Most of the effort has been directed at
getting companies to stop using browser specific functionality and to
move to generic functions. Supporting one web browser over another
has proven problematic over the years.

James

Guan · Post by **Guan** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 8:32 pm

Thank you. I have a VM setup for my wife that handles most of our banking stuff. Right now i'm more focused on debugging other hot button programs that are pretty much used exclusively over here, like QQ, Aliwangwang, Alipay, Feition, etc. Getting these working smoothly in wine would help me with my goal of eventually converting the school I work at 100% to linux, which would eliminate much hassle on my part. In addition to my regular duties there, I've become the tech expert because the usual tech guy just isn't up on my level.

Bggbg · Post by **Bggbg** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:01 pm

wow I will follow your topics :0

fracting · Post by **fracting** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:02 pm

Hi Guan,

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Guan <[email protected]> wrote:

Thank you. Â I have a VM setup for my wife that handles most of our banking stuff.

For online banking issues in China, maybe you'll interesting in these links:
http://code.google.com/p/online-banking-with-wine/
http://groups.google.com/group/non-ie-online-banking
http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-zh@l ... 08398.html

Here is a list of online banking related bugs in Wine:
http://code.google.com/p/online-banking ... ki/buglist

Â > Right now i'm more focused on debugging other hot button programs
that are pretty much used exclusively over here, like QQ, Aliwangwang,
Alipay, Feition, etc.
for QQ, here are some related bugs:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29636
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29638
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29683

for Aliwangwang, please see:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25340
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29719

--
Regards,
Qian Hong

-
Sent from Ubuntu
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Guan · Post by **Guan** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:06 pm

I know about the debug work in QQ fracting, i've helped you do some of it. I've also been following your work with Aliwangwang. As a side note, there is a RC of a linux client of Aliwangwang. I installed it on my wife's computer and it works pretty well.

The other stuff I need to get around to testing and then setting up pages in the AppDB about them.

SpawnHappyJake · Post by **SpawnHappyJake** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:31 am

I wasn't expecting all this feedback. Sorry if I caused any controversy.

As far as the whole "thinking Wine IE isn't primarily intended as a web browser," I don't think I explicitly read that anywhere, though maybe I did. But after looking around some in the wiki, a great place to look around for such Winish things, I did find this: http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-ef0f22c ... 58d29f4980 (FAQ 10.7), which seems to hint that Wine IE's primary purpose is to make Windows programs ran in Wine think that IE is present. I just kind of gathered that from being on the forums/ using Wine. How else do you explain that Wine IE is so undeveloped that it can't even be used as a web browser, but Wine runs certain games absolutely fantastically? Wine IE obviously isn't a priority. At least it seems that way. Given that your host OS has a web browser, running Wine IE as a web browser shouldn't be a need, especially given that you can run MS IE in Wine. That said, it's still a noble effort of the Wine dev team to make their own implemention of IE (if that's even what they're doing).

Ok, now I know that "release feature" doesn't necessarily mean "a feature of the release". Kind of like how 1.3, the unstable version, is the vast majority of the time more stable than 1.2, the stable version.

You just have to learn the Wineizms.

Don't know if this helps any, but there is an add-on for FireFox called User Agent Switcher that can be used to make FireFox report that it is Internet Explorer running on a Windows machine.

If a website refused to load simply because it sees that you aren't using IE, User Agent Switcher will probably fix that. But if you actually need ActiveX, that's not going to help.

Cheers,
Jake

Post by **dimesio** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 7:52 am

SpawnHappyJake wrote:I just kind of gathered that from being on the forums/ using Wine. How else do you explain that Wine IE is so undeveloped that it can't even be used as a web browser, but Wine runs certain games absolutely fantastically? Wine IE obviously isn't a priority.

That's pretty much how I figured it out.

Ok, now I know that "release feature" doesn't necessarily mean "a feature of the release". Kind of like how 1.3, the unstable version, is the vast majority of the time more stable than 1.2, the stable version.

You just have to learn the Wineizms.

The release criteria are things that must be complete to trigger the 1.4 release. The "release features" seem to be things that weren't planned, but got added since 1.2 simply because someone took it upon themselves to do so.

FYI, the branches aren't "stable" and "unstable"; they are "stable" and "development." The stable branch is stable in the sense of "it doesn't change much." The term has nothing to do with performance.

Fred2 · Post by **Fred2** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:01 pm

(I hope nobody minds that I'm asking:)
Are there any news about if custom application protocols will be supported in Wine's iexplore in near/far future? The last that I read is that it is planned to be supported somewhen. Does it have relatively low priority compared to other features or can I look forward to see it in the 1.5 development period?