AOL Releases Client for Mac OS X with Gecko Browser

DietFluffy writes "America Online released an update to their Mac OS X client. The built-in browser is powered by Gecko! However, America Online plans to stick with Internet Explorer for their Windows client. Will this make web designers think twice about tailoring their web pages to Internet Explorer? Or will they ignore this, given that the Windows client will still have Internet Explorer as the default browser?" And if this goes well, will the Windows version eventually use a Gecko-based browser, too?

Comments

Re:8.0 Uses Gecko

[Ami Ganguli]

We don't know that yet, and in fact the latest beta reverted to IE.

AOL has been really coy about their plans in this regard. Nobody knows what they're up to. Latest evidence suggests that Gecko will go to smaller platforms first (Compuserve, Mac) and larger platforms later on. This makes some sense for AOL, since it reduces the risk of alienating their mainstream customers.

Mac IE != Windows IE

[salimma]

Mac IE is a totally separate product from its Windows counterpart. I'm not too sure about whether it exposes itself as a DCOM component like WinIE, and thus is easily embeddable into other programs, but its rendering engine is definitely different - MacIE passes Mozilla's rendering tests, whereas WinIE does not.

On the other hand, MacIE has incomplete support for certificates - try going to a site with a certificate from an unknown (to IE) provider in MacIE and it would not let you in (in version 5.1 and under at least).

Besides, they already have a browser product that uses Gecko - the one used by their subsidiary, Compuserve. It makes sense to migrate AOL on Windows last, since there is no pressing need.