Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Ends IE for Mac

Posted by Zonk on from the who-needs-ie-anyway dept.

RandomMacUser writes "A while ago, Microsoft stopped updating IE for Mac, freezing it at version 5. But according to this Microsoft webpage, all support will cease December 31, 2005, and any official distribution with cease January 31, 2006. Also, the webpage suggests 'that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.'"

4 of 728 comments (clear)

  1. Wait, is this supposed to help M$? by Daedius · · Score: 5, Informative

    Guess that just means more firefox users on Mac now. Now with versions optimized toward their architectures now too.

  2. (was Interesteing Problems) by shking · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have you tried spoofing the webserver? (i.e. your browser tells the bank's webserver that it is IE, when it is in fact Safari, Firefox, Opera or whatever). The default .net website sends out custom pages for each type of browser. This is a great temporary workaround and has worked for me many times:

    1. from the Terminal command line: defaults write com.apple.safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
    2. start Safari
    3. select Debug > User Agent and choose a browser

    Opera has this capability built in

    Firefox and Camino are left as a (trivial) exercise for the reader (a couple minutes searching Google should do it)

    --
    -- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
    1. Re:(was Interesteing Problems) by leenoble_uk · · Score: 5, Informative

      Additionally, my bank specifically stated that Safari was not supported. I chose to ignore this warning and indeed the initial setup process failed because I needed to download a secure certificate which involved some IE/Moz specific capability apparently. So I used Firefox to get the certificate and then exported it to the desktop and imported it into Keychain Access. Now my bank's website works perfectly well with Safari.

  3. Re:Interesteing Problems by MTO_B. · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also, do this.
    Firefox > Help > Inform about an incompatible website...
    Fill the details, send.