Relevant for – Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Realtors

UPDATE: TrendMLS now supports Firefox, which means you can now view it on Mac without any issues! Download Firefox here and login to TrendMLS!

Today’s free support goes out to all the real estate agents, mortgage lenders and anyone else who needs access to a particular website called trendmls.com on their Apple computers. For one reason or another Trend MLS (a real estate database website) REQUIRES, yes, that’s right, requires you to use Internet Explorer on their site. Unfortunately there are still websites out there like this. They are built on old platforms that require software that isn’t very secure (IE just isn’t as protected as Firefox and Safari), and not cross platform (meaning, Mac and Linux users are out in the cold). Dave needed help getting around this problem and luckily there’s a “fairly” easy and free way to get Internet Explorer 6 running on your Mac. There are some technical details, you don’t really need to know to install or use IE 6 on your Mac, but I’ll include them at the bottom of this post for the technically minded. Below is a text based IT Guide and a screen cast on exactly what to do.

IT Guide

The one requirement: You must be using an Intel based Mac. If you’ve bought your Mac after January of 2006, you have an Intel Mac.

  • Download and install the WineBottler and Wine application. (download link) (download website)
    • If you’re new to downloading applications, make sure to drag the Wine and WineBottler icons out of the window (into a folder, or onto the desktop) that is displayed after downloading.
  • Once installed, launch the application, select “Install Predefined Prefixes” in the left column, then select Internet Explorer 6 in the right column and then click Install in the bottom right.
  • Click through the prompts that come up, the install will take 5-15 minutes depending on how fast your computer is.
    • You’ll need to click a series of yes check boxes and select where to put the Internet Explorer application. Your “Applications” folder is a good spot.
  • Once the install finishes, double click the Internet Explorer icon wherever you placed it to launch the application. (give it a few minutes on its first load.) You’re finished!

If you need more clarity, watch the video below for a rough step by step guide. I’ve time lapsed through the install bars so your install times will vary greatly!

 

WineBottler IT Guide for IE6 on a Mac

The Technical Details

Wine is an open source program that virtualizes (meaning, runs non-native code) Windows applications on an individual basis for the Mac. WineBottler, the program mentioned above comes packaged with several free Window software packages that will auto install all the necessary bundles to run the software through Wine, making it an easy front end experience. There’s a lot more you can do with the software but that’s the basic gist. It’s opensource, meaning free, and completely legal.

It doesn’t work

If you’re having trouble with the install, which has the potential to be flakey, contact us or leave a comment below if you’re interested in remote support. Check out our services page for more details.