Microsoft drops MAC IE

[Vox Populi Vox Dei]

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+drops+Mac+IE/2100-1016_3-6000919.html?tag=nefd.top

The minority of Mac users still browsing with Internet Explorer need to consider moving to another browser very quickly, as Microsoft plans to discontinue support for IE beginning Dec. 31.

The news, which came in a statement on Friday, may not have come as a complete surprise to Mac users: Microsoft announced back in June 2003 that it was ending Mac support for IE. Microsoft has not upgraded the software in three years, leaving IE 5--rather than version 6, which is available for Windows--as the most recent version available to Mac users.

While IE for Mac will continue to be available for another month after support ends, Microsoft is advising all users to move to "more recent browsing technology such as Apple's Safari."

The lack of support for IE is unlikely to be an issue for Apple users, most of whom already use alternatives. The only potential difficulty could lie with some sites that have been designed to work with IE only.

This affects a minority of sites, but the issue hasn't completely gone away. In June, for example, Web-testing company SciVisum said that one in 10 Web sites in the U.K. failed to work properly with Firefox, the popular open-source browser.

Firefox, Safari and other browsers such as Opera are available for Mac OS X.

I can't imagine any one would want to use IE on a MAC - one of the main reasons to move to a MAC is for security reasons.

 

[JStrike]

It used to be very popular. But since then Apple have developed Safari and there is always the FireFox option

 

[bwana]

Wont even miss it. I use safari now almost exclusively but if problems arise with that I've still got Opera and Firefox.

 

[Person]

Who cares IE sucks

 

[rburley]

firefox is the way to go

 

[bwana]

firefox is the way to go

I dunno - I've migrated to Safari big time since Tiger.

 

[arf9999]

I use FF on my PCs and Opera on the Mac. For some reason I've never even tried Safari...

 

[bb_matt]

As a web dev, it's been a while since any devs I know have bothered with iexplore for Mac in terms of making CSS2 work - there are a few diehard coders who still try, sorry for them !

Mac users now have great choice that has been with PC users for ages - they can choose between two great browsers, Safari or Firefox - although Safari is based on Mozilla code AFAIK.

I just hope Apple don't start mucking about with the way Safari handles the rendering of CSS2 - there's already a few quirks which have crept in between it and firefox.

As for internet explorer, there are STILL a host of issues with it's rendering of CSS2, then again, firefox has it's share of oddities too, but most good coders will use firefox as the primary dev test platform because of its good standards based approach.

Alas, there are still a big bunch of devs who won't code for anything but internet explorer for windows - silly fools.

 

[arf9999]

hey bb_matt, how's the weather?

I agree with your points. While I'm not a developer myself, for all web work that I commission I tell the team to code to firefox (as it is OS agnostic). Once that is done, then tweak for Opera and Safari (usually not even neccessary) and finally hack it to work in IE. Since I get to check and test first (and I use Firefox) there are no IE shortcuts in the coding.


PS: Exactly where is the Plasticine Epoch? Is that near where Wallace & Gromit live?

 

[JStrike]

bb_matt : Safari uses WebKit (Was based on KHTML orginally) and not Gecko (FireFox's renderer). Safari is much more powerfull than FireFox. Safari is the only major browser that passes the Acid2 test (Konquerer has recently also passed it, but it's userbase is so small as to be insignifcant)