Accessing Internet Explorer-only Sites on a non-Windows PC
Recently, a friend asked me if there was a way to access IE-only sites on his Mac. Off the top of my head, there are two options - one is to use IE itself thru virtualization methods and secondly is to spoof your User Agent in Firefox.
Every browser has its own designated user agent that tells the website what browser you’re using. Therefore, you can actually trick the website to think that you’re actually using a different browser such as Internet Explorer.
Enter User Agent Switcher - this Firefox add-on does just that.
This add-on is extremely easy to use. First, download it here
After installing, you will see the option to switch between different user agents in Tools => User Agent Switcher
As you can see, there are 3 different user agents to choose from. The add-on itself is also easy to use.
Here, using IPChicken to check my user agent and indeed the add-on spoofed it to IE7. Neat stuff.
This tip works on any computer that has Firefox. Doesn’t matter if it’s running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD etc.
Hope you found much use with this tip. Cheers ;)
AHHahAHah love this!!!
hahaha btw it was benji that asked me how to.. LOL!
Hey I try to use this apps to get to my works intranet site, some things do not have drop down boxes, is this a java thing?
Hmmm… I’m guessing that it’s because different browsers have different ways of rendering things so sometimes IE-only sites might not appear as it should be with this method.
What OS are you using? Mac or Linux?