How to View Internet Explorer inside Firefox

This is an user contributed article.

I'm a devoted Firefox user like most of you. However, at work I use Internet Explorer for couple of web applications that works only on IE. Wouldn't it be nice to embed Internet Explorer inside Firefox as a tab to browse the websites that works only on IE? This is exactly what Firefox add-on IE Tab does as explained below.

This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.

Update: This is Windows specific tool. See how to install IE under Linux using IEs4Linux.

Install IE TAB

After you've installed the IE Tab add-on, visit an URL from the Firefox browser, right mouse-click on the page and select "View Page in IE Tab" as shown below, which will open the page inside Firefox, using the Internet Explorer.

Fig.01: Right mouse-click on a webpage to launch IE inside Firefox

You can also right mouse-click and select "View page in Ext App" from Firefox, which will open the page separately in an new IE browser. There is not much use to this option, as the whole point is to view IE inside Firefox.

From the IE Tab add-on option, you can add URL of the sites that works only on IE. This way, anytime you open these URLs from Firefox, it will automatically open it using Internet Explorer inside the Firefox.

Fig.02: IE Tab option with site filter

From the IE Tab add-on options, click on "external application" tab, where you can see the path variable pointing to iexplorer.exe executable on your windows machine. While installing the IE Tab add-on, it automatically populates the path variable with location to iexplore.exe executable.

Fig.03: IE Tab option showing path to Internet Explorer executable.

Further readings:

• IE Tabs for Firefox.

This article was written by Ramesh Natarajan. At the The Geek Stuff blog he shares his knowledge and experience on Linux and other Geeky stuff. He has more than 15 years of experience in IT industry and has performed very intensive work on Linux system administration, DBA, Hardware and Storage. nixCraft welcomes readers' tips / howtos.

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