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MSIE 5.2 for Mac OS X Released
Jarrett writes "MSIE 5.2 now supports Quartz text smoothing and a slew of other reliability/security [hehe] improvements on Mac OS X. Its performance is noticably better, it seems to end the spinning beach ball problems, and is stable. It's available on Microsoft's Mactopia site" Posted With Mozilla(tm) on Mac OS X.
OmniWeb is the browser that finally let me quit using IE. Mozilla, in its latest incarnations, is great but it still has little things that bug me. O.W. 4eva, yo.
It looks better than it did, and has fewer rendering problems, but it still seemed dog slow(compared to OmniWeb, Mozilla, AND IE for 9.x). Also, I quickly found a page that didn't load more than a third of the way, and needed a Reload to get the rest of it. I'll keep it, but it's not going on my dock. I've got two other browsers there already.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
Get the new testing version of Mozilla. 1.01a I believe. Quartz rendering, and it's FAST, and very stable. Never had it crash once, looks great. I've stopped using Chimera altogether, it's so fast and stable.
Still have IE for the few sites that require it, but I can't remember the last time I used it.
I used to have IE to the point where it would set itself as the default browser every time it was launched. I had to search for every file that was changed that day to find where this preference is stored since MS didn't consider that I might want to use another browser. Here is the fix:
t
Edit the file Library/Preferences/com.apple.internetconfig.plis
Look for the key: IEAsDefaultNoBotherPrefKey, and delete the entire key segment. Save it (keep a backup in case). Change the default browser in Internet in System Prefs and then launch IE. When it asks if you want IE to be your default browser, hit no.
Now, why MS had to put this in the internet config plist is beyond reason. A hint to MS: We don't want you junk in the system. It is OK if it is bundled and easily separated, but we want the option to be able to get rid of it all. If it were in the MS Prefs, I would have just deleted those and gone on with my life, but now, I may just delete IE instead and never have to worry about this again.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
MSIE 5.2 won't install without quitting my running apps. So, it won't be installed for some time. Maybe Microsoft is just jealous, wants to bring everyone else down to its OS level.
Don't blame Microsoft for this. Blame MindVision. The installer is built with Installer VISE from MindVision, version 7.4.1, which I believe is a direct carbonization of their OS 9 installer-builder product. Back in OS 9 days, quitting all running programs to install software was a resonable, if not necessarily correct, thing to do, so that's why the installer does it.
"About Installer..." should tell you everything you want to know.
I'm as annoyed at this "feature" as anybody, but blame the right party for it.
I am a registered user of VISE, and use it for the MacPerl installers. It does not require you quit all applications. That is a preference the builder of the installer may choose. It certainly is not necessary to quit all running programs when installing Mac OS 9 software. Sorry, but the blame is not MindVision's, nor Apple's, unless there is something we don't know about Mac OS X itself that requires Microsoft to enable this feature, which is unlikely.
I trashed IE 5.2 and installed Mozilla 1.0. Now, my network configuration has mysterious flipped out and pulls down "255.255.255.255" for every DHCP field from my hub. Gee, I wonder which application manipulated my system preferences to cause that?