Microsoft Ends IE for Mac

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.'"

Comments

I'm bummed.

[yroJJory]

Yeah right.

Long live Safari and Firefox!

Re:I'm bummed.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice and save all us with Non-techie friends/relatives if they discontinued IE on the latest Winblows operating system.

Re:I'm bummed.

[leathered]

Agreed, but don't forget where Safari comes from.

Reading this on Konq now, an excellent browser with much promised for version 4.

Re:I'm bummed.

[sgant]

Now if only they would end IE for Windows.

Re:I'm bummed.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's kind of like looking at a supermodel and going, "Yeah, but remember the monkeys."

If you want to be proud of Safari's ancestry, good for you. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that it means anything.

Re:I'm bummed.

[toddbu]

an excellent browser

Our experience has been that DHTML support on Konqueror is still far behind both Firefox and IE. We'd love to support it, but we spend enough time putting in hacks for the big two browsers that we really don't want to take the time to make Konqueror work right. It's also why we don't support Opera, although Opera seems to work better than Konqueror.

don't forget where Safari comes from

Last I'd read, there wasn't much cooperation between the teams. That makes a bad situation even worse. If we could target Linux/Mac in one step we'd think about supporting Konqueror. Our solution has been to tell our Mac customers to install Firefox and be happy. Most of them thank us for pointing them to a browser that works halfway decently on all sites.

Re:I'm bummed.

[FyRE666]

Seriously, does anyone still USE IE on a Mac?! It always was a piece of crap (anyone who had to make sites work with 4.5 has my sympathy). Apart from the poor souls stuck on OS9, I can't see any reason whatso-ever for people to keep using it...

Re:I'm bummed.

[leathered]

"Our experience has been that DHTML support on Konqueror is still far behind both Firefox and IE. We'd love to support it, but we spend enough time putting in hacks for the big two browsers that we really don't want to take the time to make Konqueror work right. It's also why we don't support Opera, although Opera seems to work better than Konqueror."

3.5 is very much improved and is said to be one of the most standards compliant browsers out there. It now passes Acid2 unlike FF and IE. Not entirely useful to the user but nice to know nevertheless.

"Last I'd read, there wasn't much cooperation between the teams. That makes a bad situation even worse."

Yes I remember reading about that. Apparantly the teams are working much closer now and the Konq devs have access to the Safari CVS. Version 4 promises to have the best of both browsers. Don't get me wrong, Firefox is excellent but I love the speed (as fast as Opera IMO) and the integration into my KDE desktop that Konqueror provides.

Re:I'm bummed.

[Toonbobo]

At my school, everyone that uses a Mac with OSX is forced into using IE, because Safari and all programs are locked. It really makes me up-set. I wish the schools IT person wasn't so dumb.

Re:I'm bummed.

[jp10558]

Personally, I think limiting to two browsers is as bad as one. Just write a site to standards, and let the users use the browser and UI they like. I hate web sites telling me I can't use the UA of my choice.

Re:I'm bummed.

[Metasquares]

Coding to standards does not always mean it will display properly on all browsers. Even after writing standard sites, I find that I need to tweak some things to get the site to display well on all browsers that I test with.

This is particularly bad on IE Mac, which is why words cannot express how glad I am that the browser is being discontinued.

Re:I'm bummed.

[pluggo]

Maybe they disabled everything except IE for security reasons...

*ducks*

Re:I'm bummed.

[toddbu]

Just write a site to standards

Standards are often silent on lots of details, and it's really up to the browser devs on how to do an implementation. For example, is padding included in the width of an element, or not? It depends on whether you're using IE or Mozilla. Go to the microsoft.com home page in IE and Firefox and see how the left nav behaves differently when you hover over an element. Which browser complies with the standards, or do they both? Well, that's anybody's guess.

I hate web sites telling me I can't use the UA of my choice.

And I hate the two guys that use Billy-Bobs-Web-Browser-That-He-Wrote-In-A-Weekend telling me that I should support his browser. Of course it's in our best interest to support the widest possible audience, but you have to weigh that off against the richness of the experience. I don't want to give 100% of the people a crappy UI because 0.001% of my potential market doesn't support a feature.

That being said, we would like to support another browser in the Linux/Mac space if possible. It will keep the Mozilla folks on their toes and get them to fix some really nasty problems like memory leaks.

Re:I'm bummed.

[canofbutter]

I don't want to give 100% of the people a crappy UI because 0.001% of my potential market doesn't support a feature So why not just let browsers that don't support a given feature degrade gracefully? For that "0.001%" it may not look or act nice, but it can be quite helpful to have a page's content available even if your {script,flash,shockwave,applet,ActiveX control} UI doesn't work.

Re:I'm bummed.

[smallpaul]

For example, is padding included in the width of an element, or not? It depends on whether you're using IE or Mozilla. ... Which browser complies with the standards, or do they both? Well, that's anybody's guess.

No: you could just read the standards or documents written about them:

http://www.quirksmode.org/css/box.html : "In the W3C box model, the width of an element gives the width of the content of the box, excluding padding and border."..."Mozilla, Konqueror/Safari and Opera 6 and lower follow W3C's standards."

Re:I'm bummed.

[toddbu]

For that "0.001%" it may not look or act nice, but it can be quite helpful to have a page's content available even if your {script,flash,shockwave,applet,ActiveX control} UI doesn't work.

Well, we don't really have content in the traditional sense. We have an application that schedules people, and if you can't take an action on the schedule then it's pretty worthless. The idea of not "act[ing] nice" in our context means that we pretty much don't work at all. And what's surprising to me is that we're not really doing anything fancy. Mostly javascript that does onmouseover, onmouseout, and onclick on td elements. Some could probably be done with CSS, but not the onclick. So while we don't do any browser detection, we know that the experience will be so bad that no one will want to use it.

Re:I'm bummed.

[toddbu]

No: you could just read the standards or documents written about them

First let me say thanks for the pointer.

My point still stands - If I write my page and assume one model then it will break in another browser. You can't just write to "the standard" because then your pages will look like crap. I can't tell my customer that "W3C says to do it this way, so sorry it looks like shit in IE". I agree that in a perfect world where everyone read and followed the spec that we could write to a single standard and we'd all be happy.

I'm curious - do you happen to know if the line you quoted was around when Microsoft made the decision to go another way? I guess what I'm asking is whether Microsoft ignored the standard or whether the standard was just incomplete at the time the implementation was done. I know in the early days there were definitely holes in the spec, and once you do an implementation and push it out the world that it's hard to go back and change it.

Mozilla, Konqueror/Safari and Opera 6 and lower follow W3C's standards.

Maybe on this one issue, but they are clearly different in other areas. Maybe it's just a timing thing and that they'll all eventually catch up to each other.

Re:I'm bummed.

[i_am_not_a_bomba]

I hope your not insinuating that Safari is vastly superior in any way to Konqueror. Using both ~6-8 hours a day makes me really really hope that is not what you're saying...

I have mod points and if that *is* what you're saying perhaps i should have hit you with -1 bloody spacecadet.

Now i will hit submit and enjoy looking at that freakin' little spinning coloured wheel as this OS locks up while Safari thinks about doing as it's told.

Re:I'm bummed.

[vdboor]

If I write my page and assume one model [width interpretation] then it will break in another browser. You can't just write to "the standard" because then your pages will look like crap. I can't tell my customer that "W3C says to do it this way, so sorry it looks like shit in IE".

Sounds like you never heared of the CSS code to make things work..

You can write the following CSS:

anElement {
padding: 20px;
width: 200px;
}

* html anElement {
width: 240px; /* width + padding for msie5 */
w\idth: 200px; /* width restored for msie6 */
}

This is indeed a hack, but it's relatively safe. The "* html" selector only works in MSIE, it's valid CSS. MSIE believes there is another element above the html tag. The w\idth is valid CSS too, hexacedimal/special characters can be escaped. This is something MSIE 6 supports, so it reads the correct width too. As of MSIE7, it supports the correct model and they've fixed the "* html" selector bug, so your code continues to work in the future too.

And voila, the site works in all browsers.. Remember to put the following at the top of the page, so it triggers the same rending mode [strict mode] in all browsers:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transition al.dtd">

Re:I'm bummed.

[indiechild]

Just curious which browsers are the ones which behave badly with your simple Javascript? In my experience all the popular browsers such as Opera/Safari/IE/Mozilla handle basic Javascript very well...

Re:I'm bummed.

[dr. greenthumb]

I wouldn't call relying on a bug in how IE parses CSS "safe". If you need to override your CSS, a much cleaner and safer way is to use conditional comments:

<LINK HREF="styles.css" REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css">
<!--[if IE]>
<LINK HREF="styles_iefixes.css" REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css">
<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE5]>
<LINK HREF="styles_iefixes_ie5.css" REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css">
<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE6]>
<LINK HREF="styles_iefixes_ie6.css" REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css">
<![endif]-->

Whenever I need to implement a design in a site, usually I first get it right in FF/Opera, then I add overrides for the few problematic elements for IE.

Re:I'm bummed.

[jrockway]

> We have an application that schedules people, and if you can't take an action on the schedule then it's pretty worthless.

Ever hear of "links"? They let you take action by clicking on them. I wrote a scheduling application that is 100% valid XHTML and CSS and works perfectly in every browser, including ones like lynx and w3m. When you want to schedule something, you click the link and the reservation is committed to the database. Using AJAX / javascript / java / flash is pointless when you can get done what needs to be done with traditional web standards.

Re:I'm bummed.

[vux984]

IMO that mess is the sort of nonsense that only makes things worse in the long run.

For starters; its not a hack its a BUNCH of hacks all dangled together that only works if you put it all in just the right order and test it with just the right browsers, while praying in a cemetary with a dead cat. Throw something else at it, something new at it and who knows what will happen, or even what should happen.

I'm sick of reading CSS that says the same thing 5 different ways, each mangling the syntax and semantics 'just-so' to get something read by one browser then ignored by another, and then fixed back up again for a 3rd that manages to parse the previous 'wrong' directive but actually handles the feature correctly ... of course we have to mangle it just so that yet another browser ignores it...

Thank god there are only only a few mainstream browsing engines... we'd spend years doing the combinatorial regression testing for each time we modify a line of css if we had many more.

And god forbid one of the browser engines gets patched, fixing a bug or adding a feature that causes them to parse the 'wrong' CSS directives.

For myself, I simply don't mix width and padding on the same element. I usually double box when I need that feature. Its a little heavier in terms of code, but it doesn't rely on a dogs breakfast of browser parsing errors and voodoo magic to look right. And unlike you I can rest assured that if it doesn't look right in the "next browser engine" its not a batch of conflicting mangled CSS directives causing it.

Even dynamically loading separate CSS sheets for different browsers is better than your hackfest, a default w3c standard one, and one(s) to work around specific bugs in specific browsers that you want to support. Then later, you can easily drop support for these hopefully then-obsolete browsers.

PS -- If you want ***strict***, why wouldn't you specify a strict doctype instead of a transitional one??

Re:I'm bummed.

[jrockway]

People do use it. I get complaints about websites I administer not working in Mac IE all the time (CSS doesn't work properly). Fortunately, we don't support IE at all, so we tell them to delete it and use something else. I'm glad MS is adopting our stance here.

Re:I'm bummed.

[Thorin1977]

Standards are often silent on lots of details.......Which browser complies with the standards, or do they both? Well, that's anybody's guess.

I agree with you on those two points. What are standards in the IT world anyway? What is a standard one day is obsolete the next and a new and improved standard is brought in. Just my two bits on this one.

Re:I'm bummed.

[Thorin1977]

lol and maybe the word *ducks* in there hinted at the subtle sarcasm of the comment.

Re:I'm bummed.

[Dolda2000]

Standards are often silent on lots of details, and it's really up to the browser devs on how to do an implementation. For example, is padding included in the width of an element, or not? It depends on whether you're using IE or Mozilla.

Actually, from CSS 2.1, 8.1:

content edge or inner edge The content edge surrounds the rectangle given by the width and height of the box, which often depend on the element's rendered content. padding edge The padding edge surrounds the box padding. If the padding has 0 width, the padding edge is the same as the content edge. border edge The border edge surrounds the box's border. If the border has 0 width, the border edge is the same as the padding edge. margin edge or outer edge The margin edge surrounds the box margin. If the margin has 0 width, the margin edge is the same as the border edge.

As you can see, the width of the padding is not included in the width of an element. This is even one of the things that Microsoft will fix in IE 7. Microsoft may not deserve all the flak it gets, but they most certainly deserve this -- not following the box model is one of the most notorious bugs in IE's CSS implementation. You may actually want to read the standards before you blame Microsoft's mistakes (or the mistakes of any other web browser implementor, for that matter -- I just couldn't think of any others that make any significant mistakes) on them the next time.

And I hate the two guys that use Billy-Bobs-Web-Browser-That-He-Wrote-In-A-Weekend telling me that I should support his browser.

And noone is telling you to (at least, if they are, you are in your full right to apply a clue stick to them). All you have to do is make sure that your site complies with the W3C's standards, and it will be Billy Bob's fault if his web browser doesn't render your site correctly.

I don't want to give 100% of the people a crappy UI because 0.001% of my potential market doesn't support a feature.

I would argue that if you try to use a hypertext media (such as the WWW) as a "user interface", you're already doing something wrong, but I can save that for another discussion.

Re:I'm bummed.

[byolinux]

I think the parent is just saying that most people don't care that it's based on KHTML

Re:I'm bummed.

[teneighty]

It will keep the Mozilla folks on their toes and get them to fix some really nasty problems like memory leaks.

Tell me about it. Between the various 100% CPU usage defects and memory leaks, I'm about to give up and go back to IE6, even though I really don't want to. I'd glady use IE7 if it were available to me.

Re:I'm bummed.

[toddbu]

Ever hear of "links"?

Yup, sure have, and they work great for some stuff. In our application, we rely on mouse hover to get the user more information and expose the functionality more clearly. When you move your mouse over a day, it changes color. If someone is scheduled for that slot, we pop up a floating div showing all the other days and times that person is assigned so that you don't have to click anywhere to see it. IMHO, HTML is missing a clean way to do this type of thing, yet it's super useful functionality.

Speaking of divs, I am getting oh so tired of having to put iframe shims on my floating divs so that they work over selects in IE. Talk about lack of adherence to standards. Plus what person in their right mind thinks that this is good behavior? Microsoft should have fixed this a long time ago, and my fear is that they still won't get it right for IE 7.

Re:I'm bummed.

[generic-man]

I get beachballs daily on a G4/1.33 GHz with 1.25 GB of RAM. I don't know what Safari is doing, but make it stop so it can render my web pages without stalling every few seconds. (I agree that the OS shouldn't lock up, but if you're using JavaScript for everything you notice the lockups more.)

Re:I'm bummed.

[kiwipeso]

I think it's the javascipt plugins, as I frequently get pinwheels when closing tabs in firefox. Safari is worse at that.
But now I get to see which song is playing (in firefox) and what the weather is going to be like, what other people like me look at and even what files I can get.

Re:I'm bummed.

[jrockway]

However, I think you're wrong to so easily dismiss AJAX/JavaScript et. all - They're useful tools that can greatly enhance the user experience. However, use them for just that; don't rely on them for your underlying structure. See GMail as a perfect example of what I'm talking about...

I agree with you. AJAX (etc.) is a tool, just like anything else. There are cases when it's good to use, and there are cases when it's bad to use.

I personally am waiting for the standards agencies to standardize AJAX-like functionality, so I can code something and have it work everywhere. Right now, browsers like w3m and lynx just can't visit AJAX-using sites, and that bothers me a little. I am hoping that the standards agencies will be thorough in their specifications and include functionality that allows screen readers and braile TTYs easy access to AJAX-enabled content. Right now, though, there are just too many sub-implementations of AJAX and it is really hit-or-miss on whether it will work on browser x.y.z -- which defeats the whole purpose of the web.

Re:I'm bummed.

[cosmo7]

And voila, the site works in all browsers.. Remember to put the following at the top of the page, so it triggers the same rending mode [strict mode] in all browsers:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transition al.dtd">

That isn't strict mode. That's transitional, which is why the word transitional is used instead of strict. If it was strict it would say strict, not transitional.

Re:I'm bummed.

[aftk2]

Heh, while I remember the quirkiness of 4.5, when 5.0 was released in 2000, its speed, rendering niceties, and other attempts at developer and standards friendliness (including alpha PNG support and DOCTYPE switching) made it probably the best browser out there, on any platform. At that time, what was Mozilla at...like 0.6? Netscape 6 Beta? Ugh.

Re:I'm bummed.

[vdboor]

That isn't strict mode. That's transitional, which is why the word transitional is used instead of strict.

I'm actually referring here to Quirks and Strict/Standards mode. The rendering of your page depends on the doctype you choose. The XHTML Transitional doctype also triggers strict/standards rendering mode in your browser.

Re:I'm bummed.

[bsilby]

You should make suggestions to the IT person. Perhaps put your ideas in a proposal, and provide reasons so that the IT person can understand your position. Remind the IT person how old IE5 is, and that the Internet has moved on since those days.

And you can always add the "its inhibiting my learning" trump card to the proposal :)

Re:I'm bummed.

[Toonbobo]

That is a great idea. And it is actually inhibing my learning, because it always seems to crash right when you find the webpage you are looking for.

Interesteing Problems

[ben_white]

I use a Mac and love it, but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).

Re:Interesteing Problems

[amembleton]

Well, if Mac users cannot get hold of a supported copy of IE, then it might force websites (such as your bank), to test their websites against browsers other than IE.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Hiro Antagonist]

Have you told your bank? Because problems like this never get fixed if nobody complains. More importantly, if you tell them that their pages are broken in Firefox/Safari, and they tell you to get IE, switch banks, because businesses tend to listen when they lose customers because of things like this. When you close your accounts, and they ask the reason, tell them why.

You wouldn't buy a lawnmower that only worked on 'Black & Decker' grass, you wouldn't buy a knife that only cut 'Chicago Cutlery' brand onions, so why the hell would you do business with a bank that forces you to use tools that you don't want to, namely, Windows and IE?

Re:Interesteing Problems

[the_instigator]

You can struggle on with ie5 while you lobby your bank to updgrade it's web client... yeah. right. But still, I think this is a skewed perspective on the actual problem here.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[The NPS]

My bank actually just recently migrated away from supporting only IE. Yours, and others will hopefully have to follow suit.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[garcia]

Or, in a more likely scenario, they aren't going to care and they will continue to only support IE for Windows or other browsers that happen to closely mimic its behavior.

And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Androclese]

I had the same problem with Bank One (Chase). I explained to them that they needed to get with the times and update their website; especially considering that IE is full of security holes and no developed for on Mac.

She told me nothing was going to change.

She was wrong.

I changed banks to one that had Safari / Camino / Firefox browser support.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[thesnarky1]

What he said.

I've tested my bank against all the browsers I can get my hands on. It works quite pleasingly. Displays the same on all of them.

I've also recently closed a bank account due to poor service, and they asked ye olde "why are you choosing to switch away from us?" I had the good pleasure of expressing my complaints, and the person on the other side said "Huh, haven't heard that before, I'll pass it along." Whether they did or not, I don't know, but they DO care about business, and some employees even like to see their business succeed.

I know some businesses around my college don't test on certain browsers because they think no one uses them. I was helping one guy out, and mentioned I use Firefox, and he was taken aback.

Unfortunatly (or perhaps fortunatly) it IS still a Microsoft world, and many people don't know other browsers exist. I you come across a website/company that doesn't utilize a browser, let them know, it does work.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[SethJohnson]

Wells Fargo is browser-independent.

Seth

Re:Interesteing Problems

[bigtrike]

You wouldn't buy a lawnmower that only worked on 'Black & Decker' grass, you wouldn't buy a knife that only cut 'Chicago Cutlery' brand onions, so why the hell would you do business with a bank that forces you to use tools that you don't want to, namely, Windows and IE?

I hope this will get more sites to work with non IE browsers aas well, but a lot of people will just think "why buy a computer which might not work with your bank?"

Re:Interesteing Problems

[fyngyrz]

WF works with Safari, Firefox and Omniweb, but only Omniweb will remember the password — so there are some minor behavior differences. If you hav security issues at home, this may not be minor, either. :-)

Re:Interesteing Problems

[toadlife]

Unfortunately your scenario is the more likely one. Big banks are like that. Induvidual customers mean almost nothing to them. If a large bank lost every single customer that used a Mac, it would make no difference to them finacially.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Heembo]

What bank are you using? All of the national large banks that I have tested work on Safari, Firefox for MAC and all of the major Win XP browsers. Heck, I even tried ( and continue to use ) First Hawaiian Bank, a rather small bank, yet it works as well in all browsers mentioned above.

I'm really curious as to what bank you are using - if its a rather small regional bank, then may have been suckered into developing IE-ONLY applications, which in my mind is NOT a true web application to begin with.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[unapersson]

Omniweb is probably just ignoring the attribute that says, "don't remember this password".

Re:Interesteing Problems

[jonfelder]

And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.

Why not? Switching banks isn't too hard...it may take a month or two to get your bill payments and deposits sorted out, but you just maintain two accounts at that time.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[damsa]

If you were a small bank and you lost Steve Jobs, it would make quite a difference financially.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[dynamo]

Except when you consider that mac users are going to have disproportionately larger bank accounts.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[StarManta.Mini]

I have yet to find a site that works in IE5 that fails in Firefox and/or Safari.

Much like Microsoft's Mac media player versus programs like VLC.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[jd142]

I'll second this. I have no problem with the chase credit card web site with Firefox for windows and Firefox for linux.

My small town local bank actually looks good in lynx!

Re:Interesteing Problems

[hunterx11]

Does anyone still make sure their sites work in Mac IE 5? I mean, it has fewer users than Firefox or Safari or Opera; hell, probably more people use Lynx.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Paradise Pete]

there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).

What everybody else said, let them know. But do it with a letter. A real one. That still makes a big difference.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Reaperducer]

there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari

Time to find a new bank. I'd worry about having my money with an institution that requires me to use an unstable, insecure method of transmitting my personal financial data.

I told my bank (Washington Mutual) that, and I suspect lots of other people did, too, because they now support all standard browsers as well as Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more likely that the bank would see supporting Macs as part of their effort to get "the pink pound" (in the UK obviously).

Re:Interesteing Problems

[TrappedByMyself]

Well, it kinda makes sense now. If many websites only work with IE, then cutting IE support on the Mac may get some people to switch to Windows because "websites don't work right on my Mac". Mix that with "not all games my friends have will play" and "no-one I know can help me with my computer" and it makes more sense.

If MS can keep the common stuff working with them and only with them, then Mac and Linux will remain as niche solutions for people who are comfortable with the technology.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[deKernel]

I am using and have been for the last few years using Konq without any problems.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[csritchie]

There is always Virtual PC 7 for the Mac.

I work on a Power Mac and for the majority of my workflow I can accomplish everything I need in OSX. For those few administrative details and even fewer sites I need to deal with that depend on Windows or IE, Virtual PC comes in handy.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Sledgy]

Have you tried simply going to the contact us section of your banks website and politly telling them that there website doesn't work in a browser other than IE?

I found the website of a local travel agent didn't work correctly in FireFox, I sent a polite email to the company and now it works perfectly.

Complaining on /. without actually trying to get the problem resolved isn't going to solve anything.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[tftp]

What are the chances that Steve Jobs keeps any substantial money in a small bank? And what are the chances that Steve Jobs keeps any serious money whatsoever in a bank? There are far better ways to manage your money (http://www.fisn.com/rates.htm for example) than to let it rot on a minimal-interest-bearing account. So if you sit on $100K starting in January you lose $5K by the next Christmas.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Wing_Zero]

But it can also be a matter of convinience when they chose the bank they sis choose. For example, I use Bank A because it's only a block away, but the nearest branch where my mom lives is 2 towns away. (near a big City, 10-15 Min away) My mom uses Bank B because it's in town, but the nearest branch is the next town over. (northwoods, 30 min away) Bank A has no problems with any browser I throw at it, but bank B only works when you allow popups. (minor annoyance, but you get the point for average joe user) Then you have the problem of when someone has the bright idea of Re-doing a site, which usually breaks everything, My cell-phone company recently did this, and now it doen't work to pay my bill online except through IE. (not very well through IE either, they need to do more testing before rollout i guess)

Re:Interesteing Problems

[tftp]

That's true only before they buy their Macs.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Arcturax]

Well US bank *mostly* works with Firefox, except for their bill pay system. That used to just act up, now you get a screen admitting there is a problem with support for Firefox and suggesting you use Safari (on a Mac, not sure what is does on a PC) until they can get it fixed.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Yjerkle]

They had larger bank accounts, but then they bought Macs.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ben_white]

We have already tried to convince our bank to support Mac users. I have a good relationship with the bank and my banker, and she pushed the issue up the management chain. I got a nice letter from the home office that their IT guys estimated that Mac support would affect 1% of their users, and wasn't worth the investment necessary to implement it. They actually asked if they could buy me a PC and a copy of Quicken for the PC to make sure they kept my business.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[damsa]

And where do you think people buy these so called certificates of deposit.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[urbanRealist]

Try Opera. I've come across sites that will only work in IE and Opera because Opera will lie and say that it's IE.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Nugget]

That's exactly correct. In fact, you can make Safari start remembering your Wells Fargo login credentials by doing this and then restarting Safari:

sudo sh
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versio ns/A/Frameworks/WebCore.framework/Versions/A/
mv WebCore WebCore.orig
perl -pe 's/(\000)a(utocomplete\000)/\1_\2/gsi' < WebCore.orig > WebCore

Re:Interesteing Problems

[wdlindmeier]

I've found that most pages that say they don't support Safari, actually work fine if you can get into them. One way of doing that is by enabling Safari's debug menu, and telling it to identify itself as another browser (IE, for instance).

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Nutria]

I have complained but their response was to explain that their website is designed only for IE users.

Remind them that it is their fiduciary responsibility to not make you depend on such a security nightmare.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[mariox19]

[The bank] actually asked if they could buy me a PC and a copy of Quicken for the PC to make sure they kept my business.

Dude, I wish I had money like you. ;-)

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Dusanyu]

Download and burn it to a CD before it go the way of the dinosaur. after all it says will no longer be avalable not "Destroy all copys"

Re:Interesteing Problems

[clamx]

Had the same problem with my bank's site (French Société Générale). At the time the problem was a JavaScript that detected Opera as IE-compatible. When I spoofed it to switch to "Netscape-compatible", it worked. I told them, they replied that they were developing a new version and that they took my comment into account. A few weeks later, they changed the behavior and since then every new version of the site worked perfectly with IE, Firefox and Opera.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[quax]

Switch to a real bank. Fortunatelly there is more competition in the banking sector than in the personal computer space. For instance both of my banks Citibank and Wacovia work fine with Firefox.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ncc74656]

I use a Mac and love it, but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).

If your bank's IT staff is so incompetent that it can't figure out how to make a standards-compliant webpage, then why would you trust them to not screw up more critical systems that could have an effect on the security of your accounts? I think you need to start looking for another bank.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[lounger540]

I think most people who use a Mac now have enough sense not to switch back bcs IE for Mac, the most natoriously buggy any web developer had to ever deal w/, doesn't work on a couple of sites. Between Safari and FF for Mac, you should have every base covered w/ the exception of some pages refusing to load bcs of Javascript browser detects or a propietary ActiveX system. Though isn't MS killing ActiveX too? Banks just want to cover their asses and insist you only use the browser they "support" or your on your own. But really, most browsers work just fine at most requiring a agent type work around. I for one am glad I have a good excuse too not have to fix IE Mac bugs anymore guilt free.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[belmolis]

What I don't understand is why it would cost them ANYTHING to support a browser other than IE. Do they really need some IE-ony technology, e.g. ActiveX? It's not as if they're being asked to support a bunch of different browsers. All they have to do is follow the standards and they'll support everything automatically.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[assassinator42]

I access their site all the time in Firefox. Only problem is their front page isn't secured. What didn't work with it?

Re:Interesteing Problems

[dave1g]

I log in to the chase credit card website with firefox...

https://online.firstusa.com/bank/BolLogin.aspx

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Matey-O]

More importantly, Wells Fargo ACTIVELY tests and updates support for browsers. I've noticed it won't work for beta versions of browsers, but very very soon after the browser gos gold, support is added. I've been very impressed with their attention to detail on their web related stuff.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[MTO_B.]

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

Re:Interesteing Problems

[penguinoid]

She told me nothing was going to change.
She was wrong.
I changed banks to one that had Safari / Camino / Firefox browser support.

She was indeed wrong. If her boss found out, she would get a serious talking-to. Apparently, she hasn't heard of vaporware.

On the other hand, it would be nice if there were some way of rewarding honesty in the public relations department. Maybe if there were a list of honest companies, or something.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[rtb61]

What an odd thought. Of course it makes a difference for a bank to lose a group of customers, not just one. No bank is ever going to be happy to lose 5% of their customers (it is a cost thing, if the cost of retaining those 5% of customers is lower than the returns you will generate by retaining them you make the expenditure, not forgetting of course the relationship between greater turnover and fixed costs and overheads)

Besides this story is more about microsoft giving up markets, giving up growth and focusing on reductions of expenditure to sustain profits. In this case combining the retrenchment of all the people working in this area togethor with a significant increase in offshoring trying to sustain an appearance of profit growth so that a few senior executives can dump as many shares of microsoft as possible prior to the inevitable.

You will most likely find that this is a sign of the future direction of microsoft as they start give up more and more market segments, it is a sign of malaise and stagnation in managment, they basically don't know what else to do.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[jcr]

One percent of their users, and what percentage of their deposits?

-jcr

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Anonymous Writer]

but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari

Try out Safari Enhancer. It adds a debug menu to the browser that allows it to pretend it is a different browser, for example like it is IE on a Windows machine. I found that it allows me to use sites that even IE for OS X wouldn't work with for some reason. I believe that many instances where a website says it can't work with Safari, it is actually the server detecting what browser you are using and it relays that message, even if the website works fine under Safari.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[DavidD_CA]

Because, to use your analogy, switching banks can be as difficult/painful/timeconsuming as switching lawns.

He probably, like many people, has had the bank for a long time. I have about 6 different accounts with my own bank. Switching to another bank, because of some software concern, is just not going to happen.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ben_white]

If your bank's IT staff is so incompetent that it can't figure out how to make a standards-compliant webpage, then why would you trust them to not screw up more critical systems that could have an effect on the security of your accounts? I think you need to start looking for another bank.

The bank is a competent, and sound. For my particular needs (trusts, commercial interests) the personal relationships with the bankers is more important than the web access, YMMV.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[michaelhood]

The other day my bank's online banking suddenly stopped working with my browser (FF), firing tons of javascript errors. I was perplexed for several minutes, then realized I had switched my user agent string for another website, and forgotten to change it back. My bank's interface is highly dynamic, and apparently they do browser detection.

The moral of this is, your bank sucks. I use a tiny, tiny bank with something like 20,000 members - and they specifically cater to FireFox. Switch banks.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[soren42]

Actually, this is somewhat incorrect. I am a VP at top 5 US bank, and I used to lead the team that develops our public website. There are significant regulations and compliance issues that arise with public software testing, including the website. While I can only speak for my employer, we test against IE for Windows and Mac OS, Firefox on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, Safari, and Opera on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Additionally, we certify our site uses 100% W3C DTD-compliant DHTML and is fully accessable by users with disabilities.

There are certain laws that have been applied to banking websites, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and other anti-discrimination laws. Besides, it's much easier and cheaper for a bank's web team to design with accessability and browser compatibility in mind up front than do a bunch of back-porting and fixing when the customer complaints start rolling in - or worse, when the customer lawsuits start coming! Most banks I deal with also now hire external services to audit their sites for accessability.

Of course, these are only my opinions and do not officially represent the views or practices of my employer. YMMV. Blah blah blah.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[iphayd]

Actually, for me, browser compatibility is a requirement for my financial business. If my bank requires me to use WinIE (Safari works fine), I will change banks in an instant, as banks are supposed to cater to my needs, not the other way around.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ShavenYak]

I've used Chase's site with Firefox and Safari (and, last time I had a Linux desktop box, Konqueror). Never had any major problems.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[lucason]

"And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people."

Why the hell not? Not enough banks out there? Anything difficult about changing banks? Come on... Changing banks over browser compatibility is as easy as changing slippers.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[arekq]

As pointed out by others many times already, relying on user agent spoofing is a bad idea because when _someone_ look at the log, they'll incorrectly assume that everyone uses IE and continue rejecting non-IE browser, or even worse, write non-standard and incompatible code in future updates.

Having said that, when I really need to use those sites (seldom), I usually add keywords to the string so that it'll pass the browser sniffer but human reader will recognize that it's not the usual Windows/IE. Like:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
      becomes
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

But by all means, send a complaint to the site owner.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[bfields]

I use ing direct (www.ingdirect.com), another bank with a big online presence, and I've been happy with them. In parcitular, I've never had any trouble with their site under any browser.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[M0b1u5]

Let's NOT assume 5%. Let's use some real figures. Like 2%.

Then let's assume that 1 full 20% of those use online banking.

Then, we'll be realistic and say that of those 10% are using Mac IE 5.2. (NO, people with Macs do NOT use IE - check usage stats anywhere you like!)

Let's say 10% of those people can be bothered contacting their bank.

That'd make those users funds equal to 48 million bucks.

Not worth getting out of bed for.

Being a web developer, I'm glad to see the back of the browser that was INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED by MS. Their logic is "Well, if it's broken - what the hell do you expect?? YOU'RE ON A MAC! :P"

Re:Interesteing Problems

[gizmonic]

How long ago was that? I've been banking online for the past 3 or 4 years with Bank One (ever since they bought First Chicago) and now Chase. I've *never* had a problem using Firefox from my Mac or my PC on thier site. Just curious if this was some time ago as my experience in this century has been that there have been no issues at all. I'm wondering if they saw the light a while back...

Re:Interesteing Problems

[macosxaddict]

Hey, I know what I'll do! I'll tweak this compiled library, which I don't have source code to, by running this Perl script I found on the Internet! The library only controls unimportant things for which I need no guarantees of connectness, like my online banking. Gosh, I'm so glad there have never been any viruses or security holes in software ever.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a VP at top 5 US bank

The parent poster wasn't referring to sperm banks there chief...

Re:Interesteing Problems

[808140]

While being a sed junky is cool and all, in perl one generally uses $1 and $2 instead of \1 and \2, respectively. The latter works to support people who are used to using sed, but it makes for somewhat non-standard syntax and isn't recommended by the perl documentation.

Just FYI.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[saforrest]

I am a VP at top 5 US bank, and I used to lead the team that develops our public website.

A VP at a top 5 U.S. bank, and (according to your user page) you're 28 years old and yet bother to post on Slashdot? I find this rather difficult to believe.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[eweu]

Hey, I know what I'll do! I'll tweak this compiled library, which I don't have source code to, by running this Perl script I found on the Internet! The library only controls unimportant things for which I need no guarantees of connectness, like my online banking. Gosh, I'm so glad there have never been any viruses or security holes in software ever.

You don't have the source code? I do.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[toadlife]

And all banks are just like your bank right?

Re:Interesteing Problems

[macosxaddict]

Oh, I forgot WebCore was open source. I stand corrected. But in any case, I'm extremely wary of patches to compiled code that don't come from a validated source. I would have been much happier if the parent had said "start with the source code to WebCore, and modify line n to say X." Then I could evaluate for myself whether the change were safe.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[macosxaddict]

I also can't type. I meant "correctness," not "connectness." Sorry.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[John Nowak]

Opera ceased this behavior awhile ago.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[griffjon]

Hm. I have to say if I ever encountered a bank that wouldn't let me use firefox, I'd complain a lot in the process of closing my accounts and moving to a more competitive bank (or, more likely, credit union).

Requiring IE to use online banking is like requiring that you only use ATMs in high-crime areas after dark. Free toaster with every tenth carjacking!

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Androclese]

I had no problems paying my bills and viewing my statements online, but when my business account made me change the password every 90 days, it would break on any non-IE browser. I would get a server-side error and they blamed it on my browser. I was forced to go to the local library and do the change there. This was quite inconvenient. Especially considering that I don't own a WinTel machine... just Linux and Mac.

My decision to leave them was based only on my experience with the tech support manager who was quite rude when I explained that I didn't own a Windows OS. She stated that in no uncertain terms "to use our website, you must use Windows Internet Explorer. We do not support any other browser, even if they do work on the site.". At that point, the "get with the times / nothing is going to change" conversation happened.

They are/were a good bank, just make sure you have IE if you have a business account with them.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Carthag]

That "patch" simply turns any string occurence of autocomplete into a_utocomplete, thus apparently breaking autocompletions.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[shaunbaker]

you've never heard the old saying about banks and titles? Banks may pay lousy but they make up for it with fancy titles to put on your issued business cards. In the banking world, being a VP at 28 wouldn't be unheard of, they have VPs of Internet Security, Trust, Janitorial Services, Coffee Tasting, Logo Inspection, and the list goes on.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Lord Flipper]

"Dude, I wish I had money like you. ;-)"

The guy is a bullshitter. Ha ha ha. I've had no problems dealing with, in the last three years: Bank of America [in Boca], Toronto Dominion [Montreal], HSBC [New York], M&T [New York], US Bank Minneapolis], ScotiaBank [Montreal],Orchard Bank [Texas, I think], and Household...all on a Macintosh.

On various Mac-oriented LISTSERVs I see folks, every year or so, griping about 'but I need to use IE for my Bank!" This usually comes from mentally challenged ladies, and users of the most fucked-with setups imaginable [not 'hacked' fucked-with, just retarded 'fucked-with'].

My guess is that rich boy was handed a cashier's check for his balance and offered his choice of a cooler or a backpack on his way out the door. Oh yeah, serious clout, unh huh.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Lord Flipper]

Opera ceased this behavior awhile ago.

Oh yeah? When? Maybe on Windows it did, haven't looked. Try looking under the "Opera" menu item on a Mac running Opera 8.5.1, and guess what? Same as always, choices to view as Mozilla or Explorer, on-the-fly.

Check your fucking facts. "...a while ago..." hey, a 'while ago you dropped your crack pipe, that's what happened...'a while ago.'

Re:Interesteing Problems

[John Nowak]

http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/07/opera-to-st op-spoofing-user-agent-as.html

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Crayon Kid]

>> And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.

Big banks are like that. Induvidual customers mean almost nothing to them. If a large bank lost every single customer that used a Mac, it would make no difference to them finacially.

But think of the bad publicity. And I doubt that things aren't going to make the press once a critical number of customers are shunned by an IE-only policy. I've seen cases, you can probably recall some too, and that critical number is not as high as you'd think.

Even a Linux user won't be happy with forking a hundred bucks for a copy of Windows, and partition, and install, and deal with security, just to visit one website a few times a month. What's a Mac user to do, buy an entire separate machine AND jump through the hoops for the same thing? It's just too stupid to ask this of your customers.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[werewolf1031]

Unfortunatly (or perhaps fortunatly) it IS still a Microsoft world, and many people don't know other browsers exist. [If] you come across a website/company that doesn't utilize a browser, let them know, it does work.

Aw c'mon, someone mod parent up if only to get that message out. Really, if no one complains or offers constructive critisism to these institutions, they won't know that some of their customers want other options. Y'know, squeaky wheel gets the grease, and all that.

Hey mods, throw parent a bone here, eh? Get the word out.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Crayon Kid]

What I don't understand is why it would cost them ANYTHING to support a browser other than IE. Do they really need some IE-ony technology, e.g. ActiveX?

Sometimes a bank makes a choice for the underlying platform *COUGHSAPCOUGH* and they discover too late that the public interface is IE-only. And once they already forked the big bucks and they compare that with the risk of losing a few small accounts, the bottom line comes in disfavor of those customers.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[dynamo52]

WF works with Safari, Firefox and Omniweb, but only Omniweb will remember the password

In Firefox, with the greasemonkey extension, you can add a script called "remember password" and remember passwords for any site.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Fred_A]

I buy mine from a guy called Bob who hangs near the subway exit, why ?

Re:Interesteing Problems

[MadJo]

Actually that didn't work for me (sadly)... Opera wouldn't even let me log in, it complained about missing security or something after logging in (which kinda worries me).
Also Firefox does not let me book money, and until recently I had to login about 10 times in Epiphany, to actually get in and do some banking business.
But recently they altered their website, including the login handling. And now in Epiphany it works. Firefox though still won't show me the money transfer form.
I haven't tried Opera yet with the new website.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[MadJo]

Oh and btw.. I did send a letter to my bank, asking for more/better support for other browsers, only to receive a letter that they only support Windows. Which was not what I asked. :)
But switching banks is not an option for me.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ASUSanator]

Deer Park > Help > Report Broken Web Site...

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Jace of Fuse!]

What's so difficult to believe about it? You make it sound like a "VP" (whatever that title is worth anyway) would have better things to do than read geek news, and occassionally amuse himself reading and writing comments.

Many people consider THIS more important than work. :)

Re:Interesteing Problems

[XchristX]

Change Banks. I would.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[SgtChaireBourne]

I use a Mac and love it, but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).

I haven't run across that problem for years, around 2000 to be exact, but I dealt with it by switching banks.

I did a little research into what the competitors offered and then visited the ones that weren't locked into MSIE, which even back then was most of them. I played up the defection and got better rates, lower service charges and even a few extra services thrown in for free.

My point is that if someone as bad at negotiating as I am can improve their situation by switching banks, then you almost certainly can, too. Use the MS problem as the introduction and then go from there.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Dan Ost]

I would suspect that federal regulations that apply to one bank in the jurisdiction would apply to all banks in the jurisdiction.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[squiggleslash]

Banks probably use the term "Vice President" in the same way as burger outlets use "Assistant Manager". He's probably a cashier... ;-)

Re:Interesteing Problems

[LanMan04]

I don't have that option in my Firefox Help menu..... 1.0.7

Re:Interesteing Problems

[vertinox]

or other browsers that happen to closely mimic its behavior.

You mean like Firefox for the Mac?

Re:Interesteing Problems

[catstack]

I had a similar problem with BB & T. They only supported IE and Netscape 4.7. So I used Mozilla's User Agent Switcher to report that I was really using Netscape. Why Netscape? Because I didn't want to artificially inflate IE's percentages, of course. :-)

For the record, BB & T's website worked perfectly with Mozilla...

Next, I called up BB & T's help line to complain about the lack of support for Mozilla. The first person I spoke to hadn't even heard of Mozilla. I then got transferred to their online banking support help and spoke with someone clueful. (At least, he's heard of Mozilla.) He logged my complaint and said they'd look into it, but couldn't promise anything.

Now, several months later, Mozilla is officially supported. I don't know if my phone call made any differance, but its nice to think that even large banks listen to their customers at least one in a while.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ivan256]

And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.

I would be surprised if there were very many people at all who didn't have the option of switching banks for whatever reason they wanted. Nobody is forcing you to use any particular bank, and banks that only support IE with their online banking are becoming very rare indeed.

There's a big difference between being too lazy to switch banks, and being unable to switch banks. (Not that being lazy is even a very good excuse. There are plenty of banks who will do all the work of switching your accounts over for you.)

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ivan256]

If a large bank lost every single customer that used a Mac, it would make no difference to them finacially.

Quite frankly, that's bullshit. It would mean a hell of a lot more to them than the amount it would cost to hire a whole team of software engineers to make their website compatable. Do you have any idea how much money a bank makes off of a single customer? Every credit card transaction, interest on all their accounts, perhaps a mortgage or two, some auto loans... It's not uncommon for 5% of an individual's salary to end up in their bank's account books as profit. A bank with hundreds of thousands of customers is going to see immediatly that supporting their Mac using customers will far more than pay for itself.

Then again, practically every large bank out there supports more than just IE already precicely because they understand this. It's the small banks you might have trouble convincing, because they may only have 10 or so customers that use a Mac.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[vertinox]

Well, if Mac users cannot get hold of a supported copy of IE, then it might force websites (such as your bank), to test their websites against browsers other than IE.

Well there were many sites that IE for the Mac just wouldn't support. Remember IE for the Mac was made by a seperate team from scratch and didn't support things like Active X and all the Java Virtual Machine code that the windows version supported.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[doombob]

Strange - considering that I use Firefox and can access Chase just fine. I wonder if they had a number of customers leave. Thanks for helping them change their minds! Now I can use my favorite browser on my favorite (relatively speaking - the lesser of a few evils) bank site!

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Weedlekin]

Rubbish. I have a Mac (among various other computers), and I'm an ugly, stodgy, cowardly bastard who slithers beneath the layers of what others regard as the dregs of humanity.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Danathar]

Interesting point....Where does the Steve do his banking?

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ben_white]

My guess is that rich boy was handed a cashier's check for his balance and offered his choice of a cooler or a backpack on his way out the door. Oh yeah, serious clout, unh huh.

No, I'm not leaving my bank. I didn't choose the bank for the free toaster-oven, but for the banker I interact with. The relationship with the banker (for my needs) is far more important than their web interface. I did, however, open an account at a bank with better bill-pay and web access (ie mac compatible), for day to day use. For real banking issues you can't replace a good relationship with a real human banker.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[NardofDoom]

Make a big stink to your bank about how their website isn't supported on your Mac, and move to another bank that does support it.

If this capitalism thing works, banks and other companies will learn to stop using proprietary Windows or IE technologies.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[NardofDoom]

Conversely, if you are at a bank or other institution that has a Mac- and/or Firefox-compatible website, let them know you appreciate it, lest they slip into the inky blackness of proprietary Microsoft technology.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[Trogre]

Oh, you mean because they have more dollars than sense?

I swear that sounded funnier than it looks in writing.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[ZzzzSleep]

Quoth urbanRealist
Try Opera. I've come across sites that will only work in IE and Opera because Opera will lie and say that it's IE.

Quoth John Nowak:
Opera ceased this behavior awhile ago.

You can still instruct Opera to lie about the user agent string, or tell it to do so for specific URLs.

Re:Interesteing Problems

[urbanRealist]

Copied directly from the link you posted:

For those sites that still block out the Opera browser, Opera still has the ability to spoof the User Agent on a per site basis.

Who is really suprised?

[solaufein]

Somehow not suprised. Though, IE 5.1.7 (?) for OS 9 worked better than Netscape (At least IMHO.) Will MS then stop offering Office for OS X? I doubt it, as that is their last real in as it relates to X.

Re:Who is really suprised?

[pboulang]

I think you mean you doubt it because they make money off of it. They were not making a dollar off of IE, so it is no surprise as a business decision.

Re:Who is really suprised?

[Flyboy Connor]

Well, I don't think they gave IE away for free to make money off it, at least not directly. They did it to become a controlling force on the Internet. They wanted to kill off every other browser (at the time, Netscape most notably), and after that turn the Internet (at least the WWW part) into the Microsoftnet.

They did not succeed fully in their goal, although you can't deny they became a huge force on the Internet. But that is exactly what makes this move so strange. It seems they have given up on their ultimate goal. I mean, if you want to control the Internet, you should not tell 5% of your users that they should go to the competitor. That means you won't get that 5% of the Internet, and thus you won't control the complete Internet.

Perhaps they rightfully gave up their goal, seeing that Firefox is growing, that most Apple users use Safari, and that they do not have IE for Linux. So the browser might not be the key to the Internet.

But still, if they could turn IE into a really good browser, people might actually switch (back) to it. I mean a fast, safe, fully configurable browser. But perhaps that is not within powers.

Re:Who is really suprised?

[pboulang]

Agreed. Their goal at the time was to dominate the browser market, plus they had some stake in making sure that OSX wasn't stillborn. If you look at the last time IE for mac was released, it was something like 2 years ago. That coincides with safari not being full-featured as it is today.

But still, if they could turn IE into a really good browser, people might actually switch (back) to it. I mean a fast, safe, fully configurable browser. But perhaps that is not within powers.

Is this a good business decision? What would it have to be able to do that other browsers can't in order to make people switch?

My original point was that dropping Office on mac isn't the logical next step as there were different motivations for creating and maintaining these products.

Hmmm.

[Caspian]

...the webpage suggests 'that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.'

In other news, the RNC chairperson suggested 'that Republicans migrate to other parties such as the Democratic party', and North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il suggest that 'North Koreans embrace alternative political systems, such as capitalism'...

Re:Hmmm.

[mothlos]

Capitalism isn't a political system. It is an economic system.

Re:Hmmm.

[GeneralAntilles]

You == useless clod that nobody understands

Re:Hmmm.

[jcr]

So, the Republicans should embrace socialism, but the north Koreans shouldn't?

Oo... Kay...

-jcr

Re:Hmmm.

[Paladeen]

Capitalism is not a political system. It's an economic system.

It's perfectly possible to have a despotic government with a capitalist economy (e.g. Chile) or a democratic government with a largely socialist economy (e.g. Sweden or France).

What the?

[omeomi]

The next article down the page says: "Find out how Internet Explorer 5 for Mac can show you the Internet in new, exciting ways." ???

What?

[trepidation_i_am]

They dont recomend Firefox? Well I never..

Microsoft.fr

[penguinoid]

Since when does Microsoft admit it is not the best and recomends a competitor? OK, so they quit support, but still...

Re:Microsoft.fr

[leenoble_uk]

What I'm interested to know is whether they intend to inform the blind legions of people still using IE 5 Mac. You know how on the PC, IE sometimes hijacks where you wanted to go to tell you that an update is available, you should go download it, well are they going to put a big message up on everyone's browser window come Jan 1 2006 saying "your browser is old, buggy and outdated, upgrade to Safari now for a better, more secure experience?

I suspect not.

Re:Microsoft.fr

[snuf23]

I also suspect not as IE for Mac hasn't been udpated in AGES. This is simply the announcement of their end of support for a platform no longer in development. They do this with all their software such as when Windows 95 fell into the no longer updated and supported category.
IE 5 for Mac has been old and outdated for browser for years.

Wait, is this supposed to help M$?

[Daedius]

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

Re:Wait, is this supposed to help M$?

[cheesy9999]

...or Safari, which is better, IMO

Re:Wait, is this supposed to help M$?

[ortcutt]

It means they don't have to pay any IE on Mac developers. Sounds like this is good for everybody because IE on Mac users will eventually switch and Microsoft won't have to pay anyone to develop that POS.

Re:Wait, is this supposed to help M$?

[rdoger6424]

Excuse me while I burst into flames, but Firefox just doesn't work on my Mac Mini. It's inefficient and not (yet) good for the mac. I haven't tried camino yet, so that might be better (Camino's cocoa, right?), but Firefox just doesn't get the job done efficiently.

Re:Wait, is this supposed to help M$?

[anaesthetica]

Camino is not nearly as feature-rich as Firefox, but it runs much much better. It's not a memory or processor hog, I find it handles opening and loading tabs better than Safari, and it renders quickly. The best extensions suite for Camino is CamiTools.

Time Magazine Cover

[Anonymous Coward]

Time must have known about this generous gift to Mac users for some time.

Thank you Microsoft, tis the season for giving!

Too bad Microsoft doesn't care as much for their own OS users...

Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[SuperficialRhyme]

Speaking of safari, does anyone know why some websites are locking out safari users?

I got caught in the net to catch them by some messed up code (using Firefox on Linux) as my wife gets the "we don't support safari" error message from gap.com.

Is there something safari doesn't support that gap.com would need? or what reason is there to lock out your userbase?

Changing the user-agent string apparently fixes things, but who wants to order from a company that doesn't allow you as a customer?

Anyone have any answers as to what breaks on the page in safari?

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[gnasher719]

>> Anyone have any answers as to what breaks on the page in safari?

Probably a hard-coded check for browsers that the webpage has been tested with: Either Netscape 7 or Firefox on the Macintosh, that's what the error message on www.gap.com says (note that it does _not_ say "We don't support safari", that would mean they would recognise Safari).

About the most stupid webpage that I found complained that I didn't have Flash installed. I do have Flash installed. Then they directed me to a webpage where I could download Flash for Windows. Believe me, Flash for Windows wouldn't do me any good whatsoever, because I am one hundred percent sure it doesn't run on a Macintosh.

Did I mention that 90 percent of these problems are caused by sheer stupidity? If the web designer isn't stupid, then there is no need to _support_ any modern browser, just write decent HTML.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[lubricated]

I just tried it in firefox. I think it doesn't support firefox either. At least not 1.5.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[SuperficialRhyme]

I'm using firefox on linux (there's more at my website and the ubuntu forums). Are you using it on windows or linux?

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[jspoon]

It's probably because Gap is still pissed off from when Steve JObs was their CEO.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[SuperficialRhyme]

I'm sorry, I should have posted the whole story. It's at my website (from this morning) but I didn't want people hitting it. Anyway, it happens with most of the Gap Inc. websites. They all used to say "Unsupported Browser: Safari" in the title bar, but that has since disappeared from all but www.bananarepublic.com.

The sites affected are:
www.gap.com
www.bananarepublic.com
www.oldnavy.com

Interestingly enough another gap inc. site:
www.fortheandtowne.com is not affected, though it is an entirely flash (shudder) page.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[skurk]

No idea. Maybe it's a "better safe than sorry" approach, who knows. The least they could do is add a "Click here to continue at your own risk" link.

My bank says they don't support Safari either, but when I set it to identify as, say, Windows MSIE 6.0, it works like a charm. Same goes for gap.com.

I guess this is what happens when you spoon feed developers with only one technology. :-/

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[SuperficialRhyme]

Well, amusingly enough Gap.com doesn't allow IE on the Mac either. Only Netscape 7+ and Firefox.

Here's the full message:

        We're sorry, but we do not support the version of the browser you are using.
        Our site works best with the following browsers:

        PC users
        Internet Explorer 5.5 and above Download browser
        Netscape 7 and above Download browser
        Mozilla (including Firefox) 1.0 and above Download browser

        Mac users
        Netscape 7 and above Download browser
        Mozilla (including Firefox) 1.0 and above Download browser

        We're working on supporting Safari. Please check back soon.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

Support most likely, gap will probably have some support plebs who read from scripts who are only probably trained to support IE and maybe another browser or two like Navigator 4.7 or Firefox. It's incredibly short sighted and not very bright either. But, that's what the business world is very often like.

It's also possible that the people who created the site aren't fully competent (see business world reason above).

I just tried visiting the site myself (with UA switcher extension set to Safari) and was amazed that it wouldn't let me in if I had JS or cookies disabled as well.
This surprised the heck out of me, it's like saying we won't let you browse our shop if we at first ensure we can take note of everything you look at. Would you like it if you went into a gap shop and they stopped you at the door and said you can only enter this shop if you allow a minder to watch everything you do and also do you mind if we look in your bag to make sure you have some money?
It's bad business, even if someone isn't buying. A person just browsing has the chance of returning in the future as a buyer.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Canyon Rat]

Here is what I get when I view the Gap site in Safari:

"We're sorry, but we do not support the version of the browser you are using.
Our site works best with the following browsers:

PC users
Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. Download browser: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx
Netscape 7 and above. Download browser: http://browser.netscape.com/
Mozilla (including Firefox) 1.0 and above. Download browser: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox

Mac users
Netscape 7 and above. Download browser: http://browser.netscape.com/
Mozilla (including Firefox) 1.0 and above. Download browser: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox"

It sounds like they have decided to only support a couple of browsers and they reject others based on the useragent string.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[JPriest]

Right now Apple could not wage all out war with MS becasue they depend on them to provide some software for the Mac. This isn't as important as not needing Office any more, but it is one small step closer to an independant Apple.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Tony Hoyle]

Works fine on firefox 1.5 here (Windows version).

Maybe it's detecting you're running Linux or something?

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[pintomp3]

really? so that's where he got all those black turtlenecks.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[cmdrbuzz]

He wasn't ever CEO of GAP, however he did sit on the Board of Director's for a while.
The CEO of GAP also sat on Apple's Board as well.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Reaperducer]

I had this problem with the Gap web site a few weeks ago.

I solved the problem by shopping at another online store. The Gap lost about $800 in Chrismtas sales from me that I spent elsewhere. If I was a shareholder, I'd be pissed that they're turning away customers.

I hope they saved at least that much by hiring incompetent web site developers.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Mr2cents]

I really don't understand why a web designer would only "support IE". Haven't they ever heard of W3C, or their standards?

Ok, Ok, I was lying. In fact, I do understand. It's called incompetence. We're all confronted with incompetence from time to time. I still haven't found a solution to that problem.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[ChronoReverse]

Do you have NoScript installed or javascript disabled? It detects that and will spit out the error (telling you to turn on javascript incidentally).

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[lubricated]

I'm using 1.5 on linux. This is sure shitty of them.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Every time I find a website that "doesn't support" Safari or Firefox, I send them an email saying that their web developer's are completely incompetent if they can't write code that works in all major browsers.

I dunno if it does any good, but as a web developer, it angers me to no end when I see these messages. I know how easy it is to make CSS and JavaScript work properly for the big 3. I develop using Safari and then check in Firefox and IE afterward. I very rarely have to change anything for FireFox... and that's the ironic part, all of the special hacks and workarounds are for IE specifically.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[lancejjj]

The GAP sez:
    We're working on supporting Safari. Please check back soon.

Well, that's understandable. It can be a chore for retailers to support the web.

Maybe I'll wager $12 that GAP spent more money talking about and implementing the "we don't support Safari" message than it would take to get their site to support Safari. Who wants to take me up on that one?

Go ahead, let me know. Someone analyze their site and let me know what it'd take for Safari support.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[colinbrash]

Anyone have any answers as to what breaks on the page in safari?

Safari has some seriously weird CSS implementation. For example, they don't always size their buttons and other UI elements correctly (e.g. the height property is just ignored), because they are part of Aqua.

There are other oddities and annoyances.

Then again, IE and Firefox both have their sets of oddities as well. I suspect there are more hacks to get things to display the same in IE and Firefox than there are for all three browsers, though.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[fossa]

So, what you're saying is that Mac users' black turtlenecks don't come from the GAP?

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Darth Maul]

"We're working on supporting Safari. Please check back soon."

It's said this for months. I've contacted them often (not that I shop at Gap, but just on principle), and I always get a reply that they're 'aware of the issue'.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an extremely obscure but very serious bug in the DOM in Safari 416. In event handlers added through DOM methods, the target.preventDefault and target.stopPropagation methods fail silently. This can basically make sites go haywire.

A few sites have dealt with the problem by disabling support for Safari through a browser sniffer. Sounds like Gap is one of them.

The problem has already been fixed in WebKit, and if you use a recent nightly build (nightly.webkit.org) you'll be fine. But the fix won't make it into Safari until 10.4.4, which isn't due out for a couple of weeks yet, I think.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[progManOs]

Gap.com doesn't work with Konqueror either.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Ramadog]

Same rubbish I get if I try using konqueror from from kde 3.5.0.

My favourite with this crap is still http://www.pizzahut.com.au/

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[The Barking Dog]

I don't know specifically about what breaks in Safari on gap.com, but I've been working on a project using a WYSIWYG HTML editor in the browser, and it doesn't support Safari. From what I can tell, no in-browser WYSIWYG HTML editor works with Safari because of some structural problem in Safari (which I've chosen to forget exactly what it is). Perhaps Gap wanted to use some sort of Javascript/CSS doodad that the Safari developers have not implemented.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Mistah Blue]

Perhaps you should let their CEO know?

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[yarbo]

It didn't work for me either: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051213 Firefox/1.5

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[themysteryman73]

"or what reason is there to lock out your userbase?"

SuperficialRhyme makes it sound like gap.com has a userbase of 1

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[dargndorp]

Just a followup: whois gives ma a admin name/email of hostmaster@GAP.COM and tech email/adress of postmaster@gap.com. My previous mail gave me the following rapport:
The original message was received at Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:45:43 -0800 (PST) from rcctmw02.americas.gap.com [3.10.201.177] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- stephanie_hamby (reason: 550 stephanie_hamby@notes.gap.com... No such user) (expanded from: stephanie_hamby) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to hqnoteshub.gap.com.: >>>>>> DATA The original message was received at Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:45:43 -0800 (PST) from rcctmw02.americas.gap.com [3.10.201.177] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- stephanie_hamby (reason: 550 stephanie_hamby@notes.gap.com... No such user) (expanded from: stephanie_hamby) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to hqnoteshub.gap.com.: >>>>>> DATA Their own reg data seems to be f_u_pped. Damn f*ckin morons.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[gizmonic]

To make your protest and boycott truly useful, you need to take one additional step. Simply telling Gap they lost your business won't help. Instead, send them a nice printed letter explaining exactly why you shopped elsewhere, and that you had intended to shop there first until you were turned away. Then, include photocopies of the reciepts, so they can see actual physical evidence of lost purchases. It puts a concrete number on an abstract idea of "losing a customer" and lets them see, exactly, what they have lost.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Reaperducer]

I'll have to dig through my credit card statements, but that sounds like a great idea. I'll do just that.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[floppypond]

It uses AJAX. Safari isn't too hot when it comes to the javascript

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[localman]

Well, that's understandable. It can be a chore for retailers to support the web.

Not really. Assuming you have a web designer on board who's made more than a couple real-world pages, and you can keep the marketing/business types from forcing the site to use annoying high-tech crap and rich media. So far, my company has pulled it off.

Feel free to complain that we're using somewhat hacky HTML 3.2, but our site works in every browser we've come across since IE/NS 4. "Keep it simple" is all it really takes. And users seem to like it better as well.

Cheers.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[Bellum Aeternus]

Anyone have any answers as to what breaks on the page in safari?

AFAIK, in proper AJAX support in Safari is keep you off of certain websites that don't offer alternatives.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[dr.badass]

Is there something safari doesn't support that gap.com would need?

Windows.

Seriously, this kind of thing seems to be caused by Windows-based web designers (Fools, the whole lot!) not taking the time to test on a Mac. They can say "We support Netscape 7/Mozilla/Firefox on Mac OS X", without actually testing it, because it should work exactly as well as the Windows version. So, it probably isn't that the site would break in Safari, as they just haven't bothered to try it.

I couldn't tell you why they would choose to actively lock out untested browsers, though.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[foniksonik]

Actually the reason is that Gap is now using an AJAX shopping cart that does not support current Safari's javascript XMLRPC calls... at least not enough to ensure that the system works properly enough to get you to checkout with your purchase in place (great thinking Gap). So if you really need to purchase from Gap.com you'll want to get a copy of Firefox.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[16K Ram Pack]

I just take my money elsewhere.

I've switched from a few suppliers on this basis, and then made sure to write to customer services to tell them why I went elsewhere.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[igb]

I simply stopped buying from virgin-wine.com, and mailed them to say their IE-only policy was the entire reason. I also spoke to a developer, who seemed pretty switched on, who had made the point to management that not-IE may only be 4% of the market (this was some years ago) but it wasn't only 4% of _their_ market. If your target audience is high net worth, under 40, urban drinkers of mostly new-world and non-traditional-appelation French wine, then Macs are rather more than 4%!

I got a thirty quid voucher and an invitation to return last month, and lo it works with Safari now.

ian

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[aug24]

I do the same, and, as of about six months ago (on the advice of one of my friends) I include the line "I would not let my team release this website to production". It has amazed me how much this changes the response from "We don't support XXX" to "We will look at the problem".

It will of course, be at least partly to do with the rise of FireFox but I like to think it's partly me too ;-)

J.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[lancejjj]

Feel free to complain that we're using somewhat hacky HTML 3.2, but our site works in every browser we've come across since IE/NS 4. "Keep it simple" is all it really takes. And users seem to like it better as well.

Well, I hear you, and I agree with your principles - I was being a bit sarcastic. But in any case, I believe that sites can be both sophisticated and cross-browser at nearly zero cost.

My organization supports all web browsers... not that we explicitly try to - it's just that we have solid UI designers that know what browser features can be problematic. It really takes very low effort to build a solid and sophisticated UI that works well with IE6, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Really old and crusty browsers (IE5 on Windows, NS4) simply can't support all the sophistication due to the standards of their day, but to be honest we find that both of those browsers combined amount to less than 1% of the user population, and falling fast.

That being said, we do have a solid web UI designer & developer, and he has built some technical standards to make sure that we can evolve our site into the future.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[whitehatlurker]

It sounds like they have decided to only support a couple of browsers and they reject others based on the useragent string.

It's a bit deeper than that. I use Opera. I get this type of thing (though less than previously). I use Proxomitron to handle most of this, and for gap.com, I had to not only use the user agent spoofing, but turn on more in depth masking, with JavaScript spoofing.

For what it's worth, the site seems to work with Opera, though I didn't try to place an order. Last time I was in one of their stores was to use it as a shortcut from where I parked into the mall. Might've been the first time, too.

Re:Speaking of Safari (Gap.com)

[CrkHead]

They don't like my linux box at all. I wonder if a webmaster will notice a lot of strange entries in his log after this was posted.

Safari & Camino

[TedTodorov]

Anything that Safari chokes on (for example some functions on adp.com), Camino handles fine. I can't imagine, short of total browser ignorance, why anyone would still be using IE under OS X.

Re:Confused

[m50d]

They don't. They just click the blue e for internet icon.

Not the Only News from Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news Microsoft today said they were also stopping the development of Windows. They have decided that it is too outdated to continue patching. The VMS-OS2-Win32, UNIX wannabe is dead technology. The company suggested people buy Linux or OSX solutions instead.

Chalk one up for truth in advertising.

[JonTurner]

>>Internet Explorer 5 for Mac can show you the Internet in new, exciting ways.

Well, getting hacked *IS* exciting. Downloading antispyware updates would be a new experience for most Mac users.

At least they're honest.

Re:Chalk one up for truth in advertising.

[generic-man]

You clearly have never used IE for Mac. The browser renders pages so slowly that it'd take years for a hack to come through.

Re:Chalk one up for truth in advertising.

[Phroggy]

You clearly have never used IE for Mac. The browser renders pages so slowly that it'd take years for a hack to come through.

You've clearly only used it on Mac OS X. They did a terrible job of Carbonizing it; under classic Mac OS it was pretty fast.

Of course, IE for Mac is no more susceptible to spyware than any other Mac browser.

And it's probably inappropriate to hold Microsoft entirely responsible for a poor job of Carbonizing; as I understand it, Apple didn't do a great job of making it easy (which is why AppleWorks 6 took so long for Apple to port).

Re:Chalk one up for truth in advertising.

[generic-man]

I used to use IE 5/Mac on Mac OS 9 on a daily basis. It looked wonderful, of course, but it was extremely slow. Where a 500 MHz Pentium II (III?) would take 3 seconds to render a nested Slashdot discussion, it took minutes on a "comparable"* G3 300 MHz with IE 5/Mac. I got quite familiar with the black-and-white spinner cursor, which is good because I see its rainbow-colored descendant every day in Safari.

* If Photoshop runs faster, it must be comparable.

Re:Chalk one up for truth in advertising.

[NutscrapeSucks]

> under classic Mac OS it was pretty fast.

No, it's just that all the other browsers were even slower. IE/Mac was still a dog compared to IE/Windows.

MSN?

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

Wasn't MS continuing development of the IE engine for MSN for Mac?
I remember hearing something about that a long time ago. I could be wrong, just googled and found this so I guess I must be wrong. But I swear hearing something about them continuing it for paying MSN users.

Re:MSN?

[hawaiian717]

Microsoft stopped updating Mac IE shortly after Apple released Safari. When I had Qwest DSL with MSN, the copy of the MSN client I received identified itself as Mac IE 6 in the user agent string, but I don't know how much was actually changes to the rendering engine (it rendered the Qwest/MSN homepage badly, while Firefox did fine) and how much was just making it look like the Windows version of MSN Explorer.

Not surprising

[Bogtha]

Back when the most recent MSN redesign was launched, it didn't initially work in Internet Explorer on the Mac, and that was way back in January. If Microsoft's web developers don't even bother testing in it, then I don't think it's too important to them.

Re:Not surprising

[codeman38]

Even funnier: MSN's redesign now causes IE/Mac to freeze up entirely.

And naturally, the default home page for IE is msn.com...

Now if only...

[antiaktiv]

...people stopped using it too. I mean, most "switchers" stay on IE, for some completely unfathomable reason.

Re:Now if only...

[Ars Dilbert]

It's not unfathomable. IE *is* the Internet. Most home users are unable to make a distinction between the Internet content and the application they are using to view that content.

Anecdote: I once set someone's IE home page to about:blank, purely out of habit. I always set mine to a blank page. And sure enough, they called me 30 minutes later: "The Internet is down!"

I've also had many users complain that the Internet was down when MSN was having problems. Yes you've guessed right: msn.com was their home page. They didn't understand that they could simply ignore the broken home page and browse somewhere else.

Re:Now if only...

[happymedium]

Uh... familiarity? Habit? I've installed Firefox on every computer my non-techie parents have used for the last two years, and I've told them why they should use it, but I've never once seen them do so, although FF's interface, usability and compatibility are just fine.

However, on the school where my dad teaches, there's a Firefox shortcut on the desktop with the Internet Explorer icon--merely labeled "Internet." A link to IE itself is nowhere to be found. When I first discovered this, I was giddy at the network admin's surprising display of cleverness and competence (admins at schools tend to be morons, as I'm sure this crowd knows). And, not surprisingly, my dad uses Firefox there.

But I wonder... even after what I've told him about the differences between the two browsers, does he even notice?

Christmas has come early!

[ericdano]

Thanks Santa. I was hoping for something good for Xmas. And did you deliver. You the Man!

Seriously though, I can't remember the last time I used IE on my Macs. I use Safari a lot, and love the .Mac syncing, so my bookmarks are always the same between the 3 macs I have. In those rare times Safari doesn't work, FireFox is readily available.

On my XP machine, I NEVER use IE. It's always FireFox......

Re:Confused

[amembleton]

the only reason I have in installed on my Windows machines is soley for Windows Update

How do you not have it installed on your machines? By default IE is installed with Windows and I haven't managed to remove it.

Merry Christmas

[penguinoid]

Thank you Microsoft, tis the season for giving!

When I think of x-mas, I think of baby Santa Claus lying in a manger, under a plastic x-mas tree with a pile of presents. Tis the season for spending money!

Re:MS gets wise

[jZnat]

That, and they're also realising that developing applications for Mac OSX is not worth the effort when you make your own OS in the first place. Sure, they'll probably continue to release MS Office for OSX, but that's about it (I hope).

It's not just the mac version

[Bert64]

The windows version hasn't seen major updates for years... In many ways the mac version is more up to date than the windows version, at least it has vastly superior CSS support.

Re:It's not just the mac version

[jcr]

But, but.. Who needs CSS when you have Active X?

-jcr

Re:It's not just the mac version

[Dwedit]

On a website I developed, Mac IE had much more broken CSS than even IE5. The site looked good on IE6, Firefox, and Opera, and sucked on IE5 and was worst on Mac IE.

Re:It's not just the mac version

[Bert64]

I noticed the opposite, i`ve found a number of things that work correctly in firefox, opera, safari, konqueror, and ie5/mac.. but none of the windows versions display them correctly..
css features like fixed-position div tags, translucent png, etc

Re:Microsoft admit defeat?

[sseymour1978]

Umm.. only world domination technique here..

1) Bad browser for mac takes it to the knees.
2) While windows version is good and shiny...

Too hard to implement. cancelled.

A good thing for all non-IE users

[mack knife]

While this development might seem to be an affront to Mac users who need IE to access certain websites (banks etc), I think in the long run this will help anyone who uses an alternative (non-IE browser). Websites can no longer just say "You need to use IE," lest they lock out all Mac users. They'll need to move away from proprietary content, which is a good thing for everyone.

Re:A good thing for all non-IE users

[Zaleov]

My state government still feels that it is okay to lock out all Mac users. They said to only view their websites in IE on a PC, because of compatability issues. Good job making stuff accessible guys!

Re:A good thing for all non-IE users

[tsaler]

What state government is that?

the reason

[know1]

it won't be as responsive on mac as on windows as it won't have access to hidden memory and processor power, so they don't want peoples ideas of IE to be sullied by....a level playing field

Risky Move -

[Ruff_ilb]

On one hand, people will think "Gah, I don't want to buy a Mac, they don't have IE!"

But when they actually TRY safari/FF, they'll realize that these browsers are AT LEAST as good as IE, and switch over for sure.

Could go either way.

Re:Risky Move -

[catdriver]

On one hand, people will think "Gah, I don't want to buy a Mac, they don't have IE!"

When I switched over to Macs a year ago, the LAST thing going through my mind was "Do they support IE?"

Re:Risky Move -

[Ruff_ilb]

Being a /. reader with your own domain name, you're not the sort of "average customer" either company is trying to cater to... Well, maybe Macs, but definitely not MS. (Nice site BTW ;) )

Re:Risky Move -

[catdriver]

HA! Thanks! Didn't mean to be cheeky by the way. ;)

Re:Risky Move -

[assassinator42]

They'll just want a web browser. I doubt many people will know the difference between them, and just use whatever is installed.

Once A Great Project

[sophiaknows]

It's been easy to hate on since MS stopped updating it in like 2001 anyway. But IE 5 for Mac was the best and most standards compliant browser on any platform the day it was released. Awesome work by the original team. Sad it came from MS. Sadder still that they basically abandoned it once their contractual obligations to Apple were up

Re:Once A Great Project

[ceejayoz]

Hell, it even gets negative margins right when IE6 for the PC still can't handle them.

Re:winners and losers

[rekoil]

...um, don't forget there's no IE for Linux to begin with...

Same story with Linux, FF and Opera

[DoddyUK]

It's the same story with Opera 8.51. No matter what the User Agent option is set to, I'm refused entry to this site supposedly because they do not "support the version of the browser" I am using. Strange thing is, I'm also denied access to the site when viewing in Firefox 1.0.7.

Though the fact I'm running Ubuntu Linux may have something to do with it, though that shouldn't be the case as the site gives instructions for "PC Users" as opposed to "Windows Users".

So, I'm running Ubuntu Linux on a PC and browsing using Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7. So, in theory, shouldn't that give me access, as described in their instructions? Even the title bar says it's a Browser problem, as opposed to an OS incompatability. Though why issues with an OS should play on a commercial website, I don't know.

Re:Same story with Linux, FF and Opera

[SuperficialRhyme]

This thread from the ubuntu forums might be of interest to you. I couldn't figure out why I was getting stuck this morning, so I wondered if it was just an ubuntu issue (or all firefox on linux). Apparently someone with FC3 was also locked out, so it seems they've locked out linux users.

Re:Buy a Windows PC

[gnuLNX]

Perhaps, but there are quite a few banks that have support for Firefox. Two Banks I use (Key Bank and Citizens..formally charter one) both work fine with Firefox.

Like a previous poster said, vote with your dollars. Yeah it is a pain in the ass to switch banks but it is for a good cause...and everyone needs at least one good cause worth fighting for.

Can't... say... it!

[menkhaura]

more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari or... Fir... Firef... Firefly... Fireox... Firexof...

A casualty of the Intel transition

[rekoil]

This is most likely due to the upcoming Intel transition. IE is written against the Carbon APIs (and most likely in CodeWarrior), which by all accounts (including Jobs himself) takes substantially more code refactoring to make Intel-compatible than a Cocoa application. IE simply looked at the dev costs of continued maintenance in light of making it Mactel compatible, and said "meh, it's not doing anything for us anyway". And they need those brains working on porting Office:mac, which actually does make MS money. Personally, I haven't launched IE on my Mac in months, so I doubt I'm going to miss it.

Re:A casualty of the Intel transition

[sophiaknows]

This is completely a product of the fact that back when MS was facing white hot antitrust heat in the late 90s they made an agreement with Apple to create and support new versions of Office and IE for the Mac for a period of years. Those years are now up. They'll probably release new version of Office because there is still money in it. But supporting IE on Mac gaint them nothing that their overwhelming market dominance doesn't already give em.

Re:A casualty of the Intel transition

[cmdrbuzz]

I don't think that the Intel transition really affects this, as IE should probably work OK under Rosetta

Re:A casualty of the Intel transition

[cheesy9999]

Except for the fact that Microsoft had announced they were discontinuing IE for Mac BEFORE Apple announced the switch to Intel.

Re:A casualty of the Intel transition

[tsaler]

As a side note, Office for Mac is a great piece of software in my experience. If they're putting more emphasis on that, then I think that's a good thing. Besides, Safari is a perfectly good browser. It hangs sometimes for me when I have a lot of tabs open in multiple windows, or some sites (mlb.com) give it trouble. All in all though, it's probably best that Microsoft divert its resources to other projects.

Re:A casualty of the Intel transition

[blakestah]

This is most likely due to the upcoming Intel transition. IE is written against the Carbon APIs (and most likely in CodeWarrior), which by all accounts (including Jobs himself) takes substantially more code refactoring...

No one refactors code.

I hope you meant re-engineered for a different toolkit.

Refactoring is the process by which you take perfectly functional code, and decide to "clean up" the API, break the code, spend eons re-debugging the code, and then realize weeks later you've spent dozens of hours making your code a tiny bit cleaner so it can accomplish the same thing.

A scam was launched by these guys who labelled this process as EXTREME PROGRAMMING. They claimed you should re-factor more, and do it in pair programming. If you ever find a programmer who was subjected to this against his will, be prepared for some REAL vitriolic.

Microsoft was spending money maintaining IE for Macs. Apple stopped loading it by default. NO ONE EVER CHANGES TO IE from Safari. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft dropped it. That's a lot of engineer hours for no reason whatsoever.

Microsoft will continue pushing their Web Toolkits that prefer to make web sites compatible only with IE. Its in their blood.

Re:A casualty of the Intel transition

[Anonymous Coward]

No one refactors code.

You've asked everybody? (I guess you missed my company. We're in the Fortune 500, so I would have thought we're hard to miss.)

Refactoring is the process by which you take perfectly functional code, and decide to "clean up" the API, break the code, spend eons re-debugging the code, and then realize weeks later you've spent dozens of hours making your code a tiny bit cleaner so it can accomplish the same thing.

If you're an incompetent programmer, perhaps. For the rest of us, refactoring is the process by which we clean up our interfaces to enable us to make changes much more easily. Instead of spending 1 week adding a feature and 1 week debugging the new mess, we spend 3 days refactoring the existing code to make adding the new feature much easier, 2 days to add the feature, and end up with cleaner code so it's easy to repeat the process again next week.

A scam was launched by these guys who labelled this process as EXTREME PROGRAMMING. They claimed you should re-factor more,

More? But you said nobody does it. Are you admitting (gasp) to refactoring, now?

and do it in pair programming. If you ever find a programmer who was subjected to this against his will, be prepared for some REAL vitriolic.

If you ever find a *person* subjected to *anything* against his will, you mean. That sentence has nothing to do with pair-programming, and everything to do with "subjected to against his will". Sex is great (trust me), but being subjected to it against your will is so horrible it's criminal.

That makes sense

[teslatug]

This makes sense, Microsoft is trying to move towards standards compliance since they restarted IE development. Why should they invest energy in the Mac platform, when a (more) standards compliant browser like Safari not only exists, but is supported by Apple. Of course, they won't be able to provide Mac users with the custom crap that runs only on IE, but that's just a tiny nudge to see if they'll move to Windows. I personally don't see this as a bad thing. It will encourage developers to code to standards as they'll no longer have a supported version of IE to fall back on Macs.

Windows comes with the very basic tools

[E8086]

Those sorry excuses for application included with the generic Windows installation are only temporary tools to use until you pick a better one. IE is needed until you pick a better browser to upgrade to, Firefox/Mozilla or Opera, and to get Windows updates. Wordpad works until you get MS Office or OpenOffice. And Windows Media player is a poor temporary substitue until you can get Media Player Classic or VideoLan player, when will RealNetworks learn and stop their useless lawsuits. And you have Paint until you get Photoshop or some other image editor. They don't have to compete with other options, they only have to be there for temporary use until you decide on another better application to use in place of them.
Makes sense, Apple should know OSX the best and 'should' be able to make the best browser to go with their OS. IE for Mac is a leftover from when there was no Mac browser and people had to choose between IE and Netscape, and from what I remeber neither worked very well.

Re:Windows comes with the very basic tools

[tsaler]

Good point. If I had moderator points, I would definitely mod this up.

The argument would be the same as it's been in the past with other things: computer buyers would be having [insert Microsoft software here] forced upon them, and this would be a gross violation of all that is good in the world.

Frankly, if Microsoft was distributing Office along with Windows, I would be a happy camper. I didn't and don't like paying that much money for an office suite. I used OpenOffice.org for a while on my old Toshiba laptop running Windows XP, and it was decent enough if a bit slow and ugly for formatting purposes. I wouldn't want to go back to it though now that I have Office for Mac on my new machine.

Re:MS gets wise

[Michalson]

Exactly. IE is a free product, but costs Microsoft money to develop (it's not just a port of Windows IE). Office for Mac makes money, but IE only exists to try and "enrich" whatever platform it's on. Back in the day IE was actively developed for the Mac (along with some major cash from Microsoft being pumped into Apple's stock) it was because Apple was down on it's luck.

There was no way Microsoft was going to let it's main "competitor" die off. If Apple disappeared, it would allow enough space in the desktop market for a new, real competitor to enter (like Linux - at the moment Linux has to compete with both Windows *and* OS X, making it much harder to be accepted as a mainstream consumer desktop OS).

A long as Apple is in the picture taking up the number 2 position, Microsoft has a safety against real competition on the desktop, simply because of how certain brand markets tend to operate (Coke vs. Pepsi, Intel vs. AMD, etc). Now that Apple is doing well, there is no reason for Microsoft to pay extra money to keep Apple in the game. They can just sit back and watch Apple act as an albatros in the plans of Linux and any other potential desktop competitor, safe in the knowledge that Apple itself will never actually grow beyond a certain percentage of the market.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[gnuLNX]

"The Mac is a niche market and always will be and Firefox isn't a real threat to IE "

I think you will eat those words in 2 years time.

Damn near all developers are coding on Unix platforms and porting to wintel these day's. With the Mac move to intel processors OSX will become the defacto standard platform that all cross platform applications will work on. Microsoft see's the real threat. Many developers (myself included) only support Unix/Linux and Windows because 3 is just to hard. But with OSX moving to intel it will be a total cake walk...in fact it will probably hurt Linux some. I know my primary development machine will become an Apple with OSX on intel procs.

Parent was not Flamebait.

[Caspian]

It was an attempt at pointing out irony. (You insensitive clods!)

Seems like a wast of time to me

[stunt_penguin]

Couldn't they have just emailed both people still using IE on the Mac and saved themselves the trouble of a whole press release.

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[snookums]

Actually, the latest comprehensive browser stats that I saw show 30% of Mac users still using Internet Explorer (link). My anecdotal personal evidence backs this up -- many Mac users I know still don't use Safari.

I think the reason has to do with the whole OS X upgrade thing. A new version of the OS costs $130, and the only way to upgrade Safari is to upgrade the OS. A lot of OS X users never bother to upgrade from the version that came with their Mac. Consequently, they're stuck on versions that either never came with Safari installed, didn't have it as the default browser, or can't run anything better than 1.0 even if they it wanted to.

As a web developer, I have to say that the standards-compliance of 1.0 is pretty poor and a lot of site layouts will break when using it. For instance, an absolutely positioned element will always take its position from the document origin, rather than that of the parent (relatively positioned) container. This is a huge deal that will cause all manner of breakage on most sites using CSS positioning.

If Apple really want to wean people off their Microsoft dependency, and do the right thing by their users, then they should back-port Safari 2.0 to older versions of OS X and release it as an automatic update. If I.E. 6 for Windows is a 5-year-old browser that runs on 10-year-old operating systems, why can't Apple's 6-month-old browser run on a 5-year-old operating system?

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

I still use IE for Mac whenever I reboot into OS 9. It's a browser more designed for OS 9 than, say, Firefox. (Firefox works, I think, but the look and feel conflicts a lot.)

Of course, I really don't care whether they're supporting or upgrading. I'm using the version that came with my original CD in 1999, and that's plenty. (Needless to say, I'm in OS X almomst all of the time.)

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[hawaiian717]

It's a browser more designed for OS 9 than, say, Firefox. (Firefox works, I think, but the look and feel conflicts a lot.)

Firefox does not work on OS 9. Mozilla stopped supporting OS 9 after Mozilla Suite 1.2, though a third-party build of 1.3.1 called WaMCom is available.

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[Llywelyn]

If I.E. 6 for Windows is a 5-year-old browser that runs on 10-year-old operating systems, why can't Apple's 6-month-old browser run on a 5-year-old operating system?

Probably because elements of the underlying APIs changed and Safari uses those elements.

In the past few years, since Safari was released (with 10.3, really), there have been a few huge steps that Safari may or may not take advantage of. Safari uses Foundation URL Loading System, which was introduced with Panther, Quartz and Interface Builder have both added features that safari may or may not use, etc.

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[Provocateur]

It turned out that both of them were watching MSNBC at the time that MSNBC noticed that their viewership had doubled.

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[guet]

They have backported the new version of Safari to 10.3.9 - that seems to be their baseline platform now. MS are in that position because they have updated neither the OS nor the browser in significant ways in the last 5 years, so their support of old technologies costs them nothing because that's all they're selling.

Re:Seems like a wast of time to me

[NardofDoom]

You'd be suprised. My wedding photographer still used IE for Mac, and so do a lot of our clients. The big, blue E means "Internet" to a lot of people. I don't really care, until it breaks web designs and I have to hack up web pages to make things look right for the 0.01% of people who are obstinate.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[fyngyrz]

...Java, ActiveX and all other client-side processing designs for web sites.

No, really. If the server does all the work and uses nothing but standard CGI, then the web site will work for everyone. Everyone. If you really stick to basics, sites that deal with numbers can work for such crufty old things as text browsers without a glitch. If you must have images (say, for graphing your banking activities) then sticking to JPEG and GIF will again gather in by far the widest array of users.

Every time some developer chooses client-side processing of any kind, they are locking out users. Which is form over function, and as such, I think is a very poor decision.

It's one thing to be bleeding edge when you're showing off and nothing depends on it; it's entirely another to get the blood from your legitimate clients because you want to use new stuff.

Corporate software depends on activeX

[Hackeron]

Software like Accipiter that costs around $5,000 per month for a basic license depends on IE6. We had to find out the hard way that our new shiny Macs failed to work with the IE5 for Mac and now all support is being dropped, great...

Hell, we all know IE is a pos and I witnessed the CIO cracking Accipiter's encryption within 5 minutes (!!) but IE on a Mac was a selling point for the upper management and its a shame to see the support go.

Re:Corporate software depends on activeX

[Tony Hoyle]

$5000/month? For that money I'd expect the CEO to be standing in your office explaining why his software is so crap.

If they have any competition, use it. You just cost them a developer's annual salary.

Re:Corporate software depends on activeX

[cheesy9999]

Maybe, just maybe, we should expect software that costs that much to work on more than just one browser...

Re:Corporate software depends on activeX

[Hackeron]

Its amazing that we tried to presure them to support Firefox or any other browser for that matter, they wont even add LDAP support so we have to have a completely inconsistent insecure user management along side those outdated windows boxes too! - got to love expensive commercial software.

I see IE all the time on Macs

[pbooktebo]

I can't believe that some folks use this as their default browser, but so many do. I constantly see people click an email link and see IE pop up as their default browser (pun intended, as there are always a bunch of pop-up ads unblocked).

I feel a bit sad for them, but it is usually more trouble to get them comfortable with a new browser. I'll make the suggestion, but some folks just don't want to deal with the change.

I don't know it IE is still shipped with Macs, but it will be nice once it is gone and folks are using a more up to date browser.

Re:I see IE all the time on Macs

[agentkhaki]

As of 10.4 (Tiger), IE is no longer included with the OS. However, if you do an upgrade (rather than a clean install), you'll still have IE. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin. No more trying to fudge around with CSS-based sites in hopes of appeasing Mac/IE's "great for its time" (and, in many ways, still better than that of Win/IE 6) rendering engine, which is simply no longer that great. Sure, it's usually not hard to do said fudging, but eventually, we have to draw the line (there are bigger fish to fry). The products has been EOLed, HOPEFULLY, Microsoft will pull the download from their site (if they haven't already), and one user at a time, we'll get rid of the now-pesky thing.

Re:winners and losers

[gnuLNX]

"Apple, which over the years has been losing support from software and peripheral vendors, and may some day soon wake up and find itself in third place on the desktop, behind Linux"

I would agree except for the fact the Apple is switching to Intel processors which means we will have a BSD unix OS with enough company dollars to add all the polish to the final product. Remember many of us don't mind paying for a good product. The reason I use Linux is because Windows is a horrible platform for developers and Macs are to expensive with obscure hardware (good, but obscure).

Having just used (ok played around with) a friends developer edition Intel Mac I can say that I am sold. We are both Unix developers who port applications to Windows. He does all his development on the Mac side and let me just say I am envious. For the most part he has a solid Unix platform that just plain works. That and combined with some of the developer tools on the Mac like the shark profiler...shit I am sold. I love Linux like a little brother. A naggin little brother that alway's needs tinkering with. When it comes time to for development I don't want to dink around with getting video cards working so my OpenGL app renders correctly on every card (this is a bigger problem than you might expect). I also don't want to test the application on every damned Linux distribution out there. Nope I want to sit down and code to a standard machine (Intel-OSX) and then port it to the other platforms. basically I am a wanna be Mac developer. I can't justify the cost of a Mac right now since they are switching platforms, but soon...ah yes. soon.

However I am a developer and not Joe six pack (Joe doesn't like the same beers as me!!). However I do believe that many developers will be sold on the Mac platform and this will create a large spike in applications running on both Mac and Linux. I personally think the OSX/Linux combo will be the 1-2 punch for Microsoft. Steve just has to get the computers to a reasonable price...still charge a premium but make it affordable for Joe Belgian style six pack.

disclaimer: For the most part I am an idiot...I tried to audition for an idiot role in a film, but did not get the part. I have never slept in a Holiday in Express so you should probably take what I say with a small grain of salt.

Cheers

Office, not IE, would be the killer

[Nice2Cats]

Apple doesn't have to care about IE, because Safari and Firefox do the trick a lot better now anyway. What Apple has to be scared shitless about, however, is Microsoft killing Office for OS X. There is nothing in the Apple universe to replace MS Office at the moment for Joe Average -- NeoOffice/J (OpenOffice for the Mac) works fine for me, but most Apple users I know gag on it not being completely aquified. Without a full office suite -- single programs like Pages doen't count -- Mac sales plummet. And please don't even mention Apple Works, which should be taken out and given a clean, quick, merciful death.

I have no idea why Apple let themselves get into this situation where Microsoft can do very serious damage any time they want. What Apple should do is a second Safari -- admit they can't support a complete office suite by themselves and start pushing a version based on NeoOffice/J or OpenOffice. Sooner or later, Bill Gates is going to pull the plug.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[lo0ol]

I see where you're coming from, but I don't see that happening any time soon. I believe it was one of Job's keynotes in the summer- check it out; they have a woman from Microsoft come up and talk during it, saying all of the exciting things that OS X can provide for Microsoft and how they're excited to be doing what they're doing. It could be theoretical BS and they still could feasibly say "screw you, Apple" and leave, but based on that speech I don't see it happening.

I do welcome an Apple suite though; I have iWork and am really starting to love it, but I'm really missing out on a spreadsheet app. Possibly going to go purchase Office on Monday simply due to that fact just to install Excel.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[bnenning]

What Apple has to be scared shitless about, however, is Microsoft killing Office for OS X.

I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't have a skunkworks office suite under development (quite possibly based on OpenOffice), which could be released in a matter of weeks if MS dumps Office.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft won't pull Office for the Mac. It's a solid money maker for them. If they did pull it, it would look very much like Microsoft trying to punish Apple, and there'd be a solid case for Apple to put to the courts, saying Microsoft is unfairly exerting its monopoly power in retaliation for some event.

Office for the Mac is not going to go anywhere any time soon.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[moro_666]

afaik

*microsoft gave IE for mac for free
*microsoft sell their office software to mac users

nobody will discontinue pure profit, however very many companies do discontinue free software.
if they could sell IE to all mac users, they would. but not many mac users would buy it.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[salimma]

I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't have a skunkworks office suite under development (quite possibly based on OpenOffice)

Or the iWork suite. They already have a Word replacement (Pages), a Powerpoint replacement (Keynote), so it's just missing a spreadsheet and an Entourage clone.

OO.org is apparently hard to Cocoa-ize; though Sun claims they're working on it.. with the recent progress of GTK for Mac, though, perhaps soon the standard Unix version of OO would feel less awkward to use.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[apflwr]

Why exactly would Microsoft do damage to Apple? They compete in some areas, yes, but they aren't a direct threat to each other, at least right now. In fact Microsoft makes quite a bit of money selling Office to Mac users.

As far as Apple creating an office alternative-- good luck, hope it works, but I don't think any other Office suites will be gaining a foothold soon. It's difficult enough convincing companies, clients, bosses, schools, whoever that the Mac version of Office is 100% compatible with Windows (which it isn't, but that's another story.) Good luck selling those people and institutions on iOffice.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[Sithgunner]

> gag on it not being completely aquified

more like gag on it not being completely compatible on the documents that they receive and send.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[dr.badass]

What Apple has to be scared shitless about, however, is Microsoft killing Office for OS X.

Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is one of the most profitable parts of the company, and the second largest Mac-only developer in the world (guess who the first is?). That isn't something you just "kill". Of course it could happen, but not so suddenly as you describe.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[moosesocks]

Pages, while being an excellent program is not a replacement for Word. It lacks many basic word processing features, and suggests that it was never truly intended for that purpose.

It most closely resembles Microsoft Publisher, or a very stripped-down version of Adobe inDesign or Quark Xpress. Its major feature is page layout (which it does brilliantly). For day-to-day word processing tasks, however, Word is really a completely different application.

The only real thing Apple has to compete with Word is the ailing AppleWorks suite. That said, Microsoft's not going to pull Office Mac off the shelves as long as it's making money (and it is, believe me). Apple can easily build/buy a word processing app in the time between when microsoft stops developing office, and the time consumers become restless. Of course, there's nothing suggesting that they're not doing this already. Keynote is an excellent product, and is miles better than powerpoint, and Pages promises to be an excellent application in the next version or two (still has a few kinks that desperately need to be worked out).

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[Actinide]

Actually, it is more likely to be something of a standoff at the moment. As long as Microsoft keep producing Office for the Mac, Apple refrain from putting their considerable resources behind OpenOffice. Given that Office for Windows is where Microsoft make a substantial portion of their profit, I don't imagine they are keen to find out how far Apple could take OpenOffice if they tried, or especially how much of that might flow back to the Windows version.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[ReinoutS]

with the recent progress of GTK for Mac, though, perhaps soon the standard Unix version of OO would feel less awkward to use.

Don't know how often this will have to be reiterated but... OO.o is not using and has never used GTK. It is using its own cross platform toolkit called VCL, originally developed in the early nineties to have a cross platform GUI library for OS/2 and UNIX.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[anaesthetica]

They don't need to take bloated slow code like OpenOffice. They've already got Pages, Keynote, iCal, Mail, and Keynote has some built in spreadsheet code. A year of breakneck development work on those and ta-da, you've got an office suite. If they wanted to go overboard, they could buy several of OmniGroup's applications, like OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, to really fill out the suite.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[yankpop]

Microsoft could do very serious damage to Apple, but why would they want to? Apple is exactly what MS needs: a very high profile 'competitor' that clings tenaciously to a tiny scrap of the market. If Apple ever does go under it will be a lot harder for MS to convince people that it isn't a dangerous monopoly.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[salimma]

OpenOffice uses GTK (or Qt) the way Firefox and Seamonkey can be compiled against GTK.

So, if OO can use GTK for all its displayed components, and GTK can run without X11 on OS X, you can run OO without requiring X, which is an improvement over the current situation.

Re:Office, not IE, would be the killer

[NardofDoom]

I totally agree. An office suite that's got Apple's technological know-how and the ability to work nearly seamlessly with MS Word would be great. There are a lot of ways Apple could improve OO.o, and a lot of great functionality that OO.o brings to the party.

Don't think that this isn't already under development. There's a good chance that it is.

Don't forget Opera..

[the_rajah]

The Mac version of Opera works great, too. I've got four browsers on my old iMac G3-333 that runs Tiger. IE, Safari, Firefox and Opera. My linux boxes have Firefox, Opera and Konqueror. My bank's site gives me a non-supported browser warning when I access their site with Opera, but allows me to proceed and, other than some minor rendering problems, works OK.

Re:Don't forget Opera..

[ibentmywookie]

Opera for Mac mounts a disk image when I launch it for some reason. Highly annoying. So I don't bother using it. I just use Safari because it's quick and simple.

Re:Don't forget Opera..

[kl76]

Doesn't anybody else have problems with Opera for Mac OS X not saving their preferences? I have this problem with Opera 7.x and 8.5. I've a sneaking suspicion that my UFS filesystem has something to do with it....

There is good news

[toadlife]

There are a lot of banks that support multiple browsers. I know it's a PITA to switch banks, but if you feel compelled to do so, then at least you will have choices.

Re:MS gets wise

[Mikey-San]

It's more "whining" than anything else, you just have to go back a little bit to find it:

Although Microsoft may continue to provide security and performance updates, no major new releases are planned, Microsoft Product Manager Jessica Sommer told CNET News.com. Sommer said that, with the emergence of Apple's Safari browser, Microsoft felt that customers were better served by using Apple's browser, noting that Microsoft does not have the access to the Macintosh operating system that it would need to compete.

http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-1017126.html

I call complete and utter whiny bullshit on this. It's not that they CAN'T compete, it's that they don't WANT to compete. OmniWeb dropped their proprietary rendering engine for WebCore/Kit and began focusing even harder on their wonderful UI. Why couldn't Microsoft have done this? Lots of applications have integrated Kit/Core, from third-party Web browser to instant messaging clients. I guess Microsoft doesn't have the resources that some 18-year-old kid with an ADC account does, right?

Irony: "We can't compete because someone else makes the OS and we don't have full access to it." - Microsoft

Call me a fucking waaaaaaaaaaaaaahmbulance, Redmond. You lost on this platform because you couldn't make a good Web browser if you tried, and all you did was blame someone else.

Good riddance

[GrahamCox]

Bye! Close the door behind you on the way out. You won't be missed.

One down, then thousand apps to go!

[scruffylooking]

Thats one down and ten thousand applications to go! Finally Microsoft has to formulate something new to them, an exit strategy!

Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[AnamanFan]

This is the best news I got this weekend!

Working for a certain college in Boston, I have to deal with MacIE for all my web applications. Why? Because of PC users.

On our campus, we have eMacs as kiosks in the halls. Using Fruitmenu, there are three programs in the 'Internet' folder: Safari, Firefox, & MacIE. For the Mac users, they all go for Safari or Firefox. However, PC users will use Internet Explorer. Why? Because that's what they use on the PC, so it must be the same, right? :rolleyes:

It wasn't removed due to a bit of bureaucratic mixups and politics. As a web developer, I was breaking one of my rules and using user-agent detection to sniff out MacIE and explicit instructions to use Firefox or Safari on that kiosk.

Now that I can point to Microsoft officially stopping support, it will be a lot easier to get the application removed all together.

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[martinX]

Couldn't you have renamed your browser of choice "Click here to browse the web.app"?

Oh, and be careful that trying to get IE removed doesn't get the Macs removed altogether...

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[AnamanFan]

Not my department. I only make web applications for a different department. I've already been in talks with the help desk department and we already were making some progress. This news helps these matters.

And there's no worry about getting the Macs removed. That's just crazy-talk!

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[hackstraw]

there are three programs in the 'Internet' folder: Safari, Firefox, & MacIE. For the Mac users, they all go for Safari or Firefox.,

Who in their right mind would pick an internet web browser with a filename of "Safari" or "Firefox" over a web browser with a filename of "Internet Explorer"? I'm banking that Internet Explorer was not really renamed to "MacIE".

I've seen people that were mostly Mac users that used IE because they simply did not know what "Safari" was. I think that Firefox is not a very good name either for a fairly niche product that is mostly installed by geeks like us on friends and families computers from what I hear are often renamed to "Internet" or similar. I've done it with roommates that use my accounts on my Mac where I put a symlink of /Applications/Safari on the desktop named "Internet". No one questioned what it was, or had problems using it.

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[DurendalMac]

Oh, I've got one even better than that. I work at Central Washington University, and someone insisted that all the Macs have Netscape installed. Netscape fucking SUCKS, but the students who don't know better use it because it's a familiar icon in the dock. The damn browser doesn't even display the school's own pages properly (and wont even let students into some of their account pages), but some dumbshit in the administration wanted Netscape on there. It hangs a lot, too, and I have to force quit for students, it doesn't like printing, and it's kludgy. IE, even though it hasn't been updated in years, is still better than that shit.

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get rid of it right now! But before you do ...

Go to Applications. Click on Internet Explorer.app. Command-i. Copy icon.
Go to Applications Click on Firefox.app. Command-i. Paste icon.

Done. Should be enough to fool the Microsoftians that gravitate towards the big blue E.

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[shut_up_man]

I totally agree... getting websites to work with the increasingly cruddy and updated IE5.2 was the most annoying part of my job. I had already started talking to work people about officially not supporting it anymore, since they could always use Safari or Firefox on Mac, so this event pretty much seals it.

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[generationxyu]

Working with a certain college in Chicago, we deal with the same thing. We're rolling out the Tiger image in the labs in the next week or so, and IE's not going to be on it. Our solution is to make a Safari shortcut on the desktop called "Internet."

Re:Now we can get rid of MacIE!

[ScottCooperDotNet]

Congrats, but there will be countless other developers who will make near-perfect websites who will get a call from an irate client at 4 in the afternoon on a Sunday over some luddite who still uses Netscape 4.7 on their Windows 98 box.

I'm not a web dev. so maybe that won't happen with MacIE, but from what I've seen there will still be some pros testing sites with it.

IE is dead... Long live IE!

[BerkeleyDude]

Are they even reading their own articles?

It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari.

What's new in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS X?
What's new in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS 8.1 to 9.x?
Get Internet Explorer 5 for Mac now!
Demo Internet Explorer 5 for Mac

Re:IE is dead... Long live IE!

[iKillCellphones]

What's new in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS X? Oooh! I hear they have new-fangled "Favourites" and a neato feature where you can change the interface colour to "Blueberry" or "Key Lime".

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[Tony Hoyle]

You've been on *way* too much cool-aid.

'all' developers coding on Unix platforms? WTF? The majority have never even used it.

OSX just isn't standard enough for cross platform work, btw. the kernel is Unix but the filesystem layout is nonstandard (not to mention the case insensitive filesystem). I also doesn't run X by default so GUI work is out.

(was Interesteing Problems)

[shking]

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)

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[leenoble_uk]

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.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[DigiShaman]

Which bank was this? I want to know so I can stay far away from them as possible. It's not the technology they use that bugs me, but rather the technology they refuse to support as though it was black listed.

*sniff*

I smell legalities at the heart of the matter. I'm willing to bet that if a customers PC gets hacked or the encrypted process gets compromised during an online transaction, the bank can simply point the finger to Microsoft as they have deeper pockets. As such, MS would prolly settle out of court to avoid bad public relations.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[Sithgunner]

You really don't want to go the unsupported way in the risk of messing around with your own bank account...

If you're despearete use Remote Desktop to Windows and be done with it, I hate to have malfunctioning JavaScript make errors and not even show if there was an error because of unsupported function or different behaviour with the spoofed browser of your choice.

It's not like you want to send money twice because the last JS didn't show you the 'transfer completed' screen...

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[deaddrunk]

And to that last sentence I simply say ha! When have Microsoft EVER had to pay up due to losses due to their poorly designed software?

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[DigiShaman]

Good question. Though I'm treading on a conspiracy theory, I suspect MS paid off the plaintiff enough so they would keep their mouth shut.

Anyways...just a thought.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[Harpa]

Please -- can someone give me a further hint on how to spoof IE in Firefox? Been Googling for more than a few minutes but can't seem to find out how to do this...

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[Eivind]

Yes. But it should always be accompanied by a written complaint. Otherwise the bank will only see one more IE-user, and thus think they're doing the rigth thing. Or even worse, they see that you used to be a Safari-user, but after they started demanding IE, you "changed" (you didn't, but they don't know that!) so obviously the change was no problem for you.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[gnu-generation-one]

"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."

Is that kind of hacking into bank websites legal?

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[Just Some Guy]

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.

The good news: I just got a quad-Opteron motherboard.

The bad news: that wasn't really your bank.

Seriously, what kind of cheap SOBs won't spring for a Verisign cert for a freakin' banking website?

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[leenoble_uk]

What could possibly be illegal about it?

They send me a digital certificate for my browser which Firefox saves in its own personal repository instead of using the Keychain like every good application should. It has the ability to export the certificate which is mine anyway. I install it in my keychain and Safari handles the technical gubbins which goes on to authorise me to the site.

Actually thinking about it again, I think the requirements for the site were that I use Netscape on the Mac but I use Firefox with UA spoofing and it worked perfectly well, and now I use Safari with no issues at all.

To answer the question as to which bank, it is a business account with the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation which is posh speak for Midland bank in the UK.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[ArmedStupidity]

Konqueror does this too, under "Tools -> Change Browser Identification." It works for me on Slackware 10.1, but I've learned not to trust anything that might be standard. It probably isn't, in Linux. But that's a good thing.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[Listen Up]

You should send a detailed write-up to your bank explaining how you got Safari to work with their banking system. I could simply be that the website designed have no idea what they are doing and are not supporting Safari for no good reason. Good job.

Re:(was Interesteing Problems)

[leenoble_uk]

There's a 50% chance that might be the case, but there's a 50% chance it might scare them and they'd try to block Safari from making connections at all. You know what control freaks these people are. I don't want to give them an excuse to cut me off.

Re:MS gets wise

[aywwts4]

Admitedly they barely tried and probably dont care one bit. They dont really care about losing this platform and dont see it as any skin off their back, the less access apple users have to the many IE only pages the better in their book. Yes 'full access" isnt the real reason, but I think the only person getting that emotional about it is you.

Sad...

[Zantetsuken]

Its sad as hell when a company like MS admits that their product is inferior (they already knew it was, but admitting it is another story), when they should put a few $xx thousand into it to bring it up to par...

Re:Microsoft admit defeat?

[Total_Wimp]

But the less I.E. the better.

I'm hoping this will provide all sorts of benefits for not only Mac users, but also the web community as a whole.

The IE on the Mac was so significantly different than the current version of Windows IE that it gave a false sense of security to the Mac using community. They thought that since they had IE, their web experience would be the same as their Windows-using friends. They were wrong.

Now that they're being forced to use one of the other browsers, it will become very apparent that a)the other browsers have some nice features and b) the other browsers are ignored by a certain subset of the web community.

Once the Mac Faithful have a better understanding of just how much they've been marginalized over the last few years, hopefully they'll use their vocalness to aid the fight for web content providers to provide standards-compliant, works-on-any-browser web sites. They'll crow about Safari passing the Acid Test and they'll point out that all browsers should pass this test.

Since the Safari-using community will grow overnight and its percentage of users will be added to the likes of Firefox as a large alternate web browsing community, the content providers will (hopefully) increasingly start writing standars-compliant web sites so all of their customers will be able to use their content. After all, it's a lot harder to ignore 20% than 10% of your potential audience.

One more great thing. Mac users love Apple products so they'll use Safari way more than Firefox. This will help keep web browser usage diversified. If we could get as much as 20% web usage as one of these two and 10% of web usage as non-IE mobile browsing then content providers will increasingly find it silly to support IE only, while also finding it silly to support only one of the other browsers. Diversity is a very good thing for everyone.

TW

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[CoolMoDee]

except it is a point and click install of X11 (from apple noless), then a matter of using fink/darwinports for the other X apps you need..so GUI is indeed IN.

Always remember...

[n0dna]

its *never* a Firefox problem. 40% of the net doesn't work in Firefox because those webmasters don't know how to code. We need to force webmasters to change their pages instead of forcing competing browsers to provide comparable performance.

Re:Always remember...

[Yjerkle]

its *never* a Firefox problem.

Right. It's not like Firefox has any six year old css deficiencies or anything like that.

Firefox and Safari

[kabloom]

They couldn't exactly suggest Firefox because that's open source

Weird

[pupeno]

Weird that they didn't recommend upgrading processor to an x86 based and OS to Windows. Would have been funnier.

Flamebait?!

[murderlegendre]

Oh come on people, LAUGH.. it's FUNNY.

Who the heck modded that FB?

Re:Flamebait?!

[narcc]

The MOD Squad has been angry lately -- apparently mod points are only granted to those who get seasonal depression.

Mods: Where is your Christmas Spirit?!

Re:Flamebait?!

[xactuary]

1. I have mod points. 2. I have suffered from depression. 3. Posting a comment means I can't mod you up, and had you written something else the possibility exists that might have modded you up. 4. Prophet!!!... Oh Christ, off to hell for me. NOT. LOL!!! Merry Holidays!!!

IE5 was a godsend

[martinX]

Considering what was around at the time (Netscape 4.7), IE5 or the Mac was a godsend. It worked well on the Mac, even rendered PNGs, had the best CSS support at the time and, quite importantly, had the MS seal of approval. That was important for mac users then.

It would have been interesting to see how good Tantek could have made IE for the Mac if given a chance. His contributions to the Mac platform, and the web community at large, are often unappreciated by those who benefit the most from them.

Re:IE5 was a godsend

[linefeed0]

"Even" rendered PNGs? You mean like every version of IE for Windoze since 4.0 and every version of Netscape, for any platform, starting with the 4.04 patch release? About oh, say three years late?

Yeah, I remember ie5 was a godsend... because Mac users started being able to see PNG's like everyone else. What a fucking joke IE 4.x for Mac was, with all the corners it cut. And its support for third-party certification authorities (CAs) was still broken and never got fixed, ever. No version of IE for Mac was a godsend if you worked for an institution that had its own in-house CA. I wonder who at Microsoft got the baksheesh from Verisign for that one.

Re:IE5 was a godsend

[martinX]

Sorry, I meant *good* PNG support. IE5 for the Mac displayed PNGs with alpha transparency. Without alpha transparency, you may as well be using a JPEG. So rather than being able to see NGs like everyone else, we could see them better than everyone else.
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#brows ers

As for the support for third-party certification authorities, I never ran into that one but I can see it would be a problem for some organisations.

You can't always get what you want

[ScentCone]

but who wants to order from a company that doesn't allow you as a customer

You mean, like retailers that don't take your Discover Card? Some businesses - even big ones - don't invest in every option that every potential customer might want to use... and for big companies, those are usually very deliberate choices. Doesn't mean they won't get around to it, but it's not usually because they don't know how (technically), it's usually because they ran out of time to produce a totally cross-platform site, and had to go live to correspond with scads of other marketing initiatives (print materials, TV ads, credit incentives, magazine layouts, employee training, vendor shipments, etc). Might be the tail wagging the dog, but it happens all the time with all sorts of things - we're only talking about browsers on Macs because we're here on slashdot. If you were in the retail finance/accounting circles, you'd be talking about Gap's choices of card acceptance, or job listing technologies, or shipment tracking EDI legacy technology compatibility.

Re:You can't always get what you want

[TekPolitik]

it's not usually because they don't know how (technically), it's usually because they ran out of time to produce a totally cross-platform site

This is not always true. Our marketdroids produced a site at one point that would not work with anything other than IE. When told of this they said they didn't care. As it happens the geeks here had more influence with the CEO, and so this attitude was readjusted toute suite, but in many organisations marketing has the hold of the CEO's attention (since they are seen, rightly or wrongly, as the people who bring cash in, as opposed to productive people who are "just" cost centres), and in such cases this sort of thing won't be caught.

Re:You can't always get what you want

[igb]

However, the particular case of locking out Mac users appears especially stupid in the case of Gap. One cannot help thinking of Boo.com, whose pitch for niche high-cost clothing ran only on Windows, around the time the original iMac came out. Sure, it wasn't their only botch (not by a long chalk) but it can't have helped. Mac users are going to be higher net worth than Windows users, as a bloc, and more likely to be urban and neophile. It'd be like a company deciding to lock out Saab drivers, on the grounds that more of their customers drive Chevys. Fine for Billy Bob's Rib Bar, less fine for Belgian Cotton Sheets R Us.

ian

Re:You can't always get what you want

[gnasher719]

'' Our marketdroids produced a site at one point that would not work with anything other than IE. When told of this they said they didn't care. As it happens the geeks here had more influence with the CEO, and so this attitude was readjusted toute suite ''

Very strange. I had heard of cases where it was the other way round, web designers who didn't want to cater for "idiots who spend much too much money on overpriced hardware", and the marketing people didn't mind at all to sell to people who spend much too much money on overpriced hardware.

Re:You can't always get what you want

[ScentCone]

It'd be like a company deciding to lock out Saab drivers, on the grounds that more of their customers drive Chevys. Fine for Billy Bob's Rib Bar, less fine for Belgian Cotton Sheets R Us.

Hey, I drive a Chevy and like nice sheets you insensitive clod!

I do get your point, though. But a decision to not develop content for Mac users, while stupid (especially for someone like Boo.com, as you say) is still deliberate, I think. Not out of an informed dislike for that customer/visitor, but out of a no-doubt misguided notion about the best way to spend the IT/marketing dollars or project lifecycle man hours.

Stange thing is...

[Hamster Lover]

if you use Safari Enhancer to alter the user agent setting to "Firefox" or something similar the page displays fine.

Not that it matters as I have moved to Firefox as my default browser. I like Safari but I want the Flashblock and AdBlock plugins for Firefox.

Re:Stange thing is...

[cheesy9999]

You can also enable the debug menu in Safari which easily lets you change the user agent. But use sparingly.

Re:Stange thing is...

[pomo monster]

Similar plugins exist for Safari. I use SafariStand to give me "click to play Flash" and SafariBlock for general adblocking.

Re:Stange thing is...

[plj]

if you use Safari Enhancer to alter the user agent setting to "Firefox" or something similar the page displays fine.

You don't need that. Just open terminal, and give the following command:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

When done, you can choose UA string from Debug menu.

(Mentioned here.)

Also, while the already suggested SafariBlock is for sure better than nothing, personally I find PithHelmet better (it costs money, though – whopping $10).

Re:MS gets wise

[scrod]

...noting that Microsoft does not have the access to the Macintosh operating system that it would need to compete

LOL! Not only is the WebKit framework available to any developer who can drag and drop in Interface Builder, but WebCore is available under an open source license! Microsoft has access to the freaking source code. Public relations departments are funny.

What support?

[pigwin32]

Come on, what support exactly is being dropped? Is there anyone foolish enough to actually try to get in touch with Microsoft to get a fix for IE Mac? This is just making the status quo official. And btw, just because support is being dropped doesn't make the product stop working.

Also, IE Mac version 5 used the Tasman engine which was a great improvement on what was available at the time on any platform.

Isn't there something a little more compelling to report, this one seems custom made for the Mac zealots. Break out the moofs.

Re:Microsoft admit defeat?

[mAineAc]

Too hard to implement. cancelled.

I am not sure this is the case. If microsoft built a version for the newest Mac OS, which is based on a free unix variant, how long do you think it would before people would start porting it to their arch enemy, Linux.

Good for ALL web users.

[ChunderDownunder]

Web technologies evolve and there is no value in supporting a product which cannot render the latest standards.

Web developers have been plagued by browsers that do not support xhtml, css and ecmascript. Consequently they have had to 'dumb-down' content to be displayable in older browsers.

Microsoft will release a new version of IE for Vista. It's challenge of firefox evangelists to convince everyone else to use gecko or khtml-derived engines.

There's a certain skepticism about the AJAX revolution given legacy browsers that still exist. Discontinuing an ancient version of IE is a step in the right direction.

but how many mac users will complain?

[fantomas]

How many use online banking? (so let's reduce the factor a bit more)
How many of these users will complain instead of getting a work around? (so lets reduce it a bit further)
And how much of the assets you note are in personal banking? I am going to guess a good percentage of the assets are in corporate finance.

Alas, I think the Mac users have a lot less clout than you hope. But here's hoping banks sort out their websites and make them standards compliant....

Re:but how many mac users will complain?

[Nutria]

How many of these users will complain instead of getting a work around?

Politely complaining is actually a very effective tactic, since "they" know that for every complainer, there's a hundred who stay silent and move to a different business. It has worked for me in on-line banking.

"Hi,
Your web banking app doesn't load properly with Mozilla 1.blah. I really like this bank, but for security reasons refuse to use IE. So, please configure your site to not be dependent on security disaster IE.
Sincerely,
blah blah

Re:but how many mac users will complain?

[iTristan]

I do this fairly often with sites and organizations I think really should have their $#%! together enough to have done their due diligence.

But as parent said, I do it politely and point out that many users (of all platforms) choose not to use IE in increasing numbers, and feel much more comfortable - especially in a secured-environment situation - to use their browser of choice.

How much difference have I made? Who knows, but if these places are going to have their blinders removed, they obviously need help.

Re:MS gets wise

[bcrowell]

Somebody doesn't seem to understand the definition of flamebait :-)

How unfair

[slysithesuperspy]

What am I going todo now?

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[gnuLNX]

"'all' developers coding on Unix platforms? WTF? The majority have never even used it."

Ok let me refraphse that: Most independant developers...and any developer who has never developed on a Unix platform is bound to be at least a little incompetent.. I have never met a single developer who has NEVER user Unix. I know some that get paid to work in windows shops and they don't tinker much at home. By they all at least have done development in Unix. Most people who truly love to code will argue that Unix is the superior platform. I am arguing that once they are given the chance to work on a platform as polished as OSX with the same tools they love from Linux many will switch..I am one of them.

"OSX just isn't standard enough for cross platform work, btw. the kernel is Unix but the filesystem layout is nonstandard (not to mention the case insensitive filesystem). I also doesn't run X by default so GUI work is out."

Not standard to Linux. Very similar to Irix. I like th eLInux layout better myself, but then I have used Linux almost exclusivly for about 6 years now.

Right and Windows is? Come one. You can set your development environment on OSX however you like...I have a friend who runs his company with all development on OSX and ports to Windows, Linux, Irix, and Sun. Most users are windows users and he would flat out say you have never given it a chance...in fact I argued for quite awhile myself until he walked me throught some of his setups. OSX blows away other Unices for out-of-the-box configuration. A file system hierarchy is irrelvevant. In production code you do your best to get static compiles and filesystem dependancies out anyway. I mean the difference between Windows and Linux is night and Day yet we still manage to do it. OSX moving to Intel platform will open up a lot of doors to developers who need to code very close to the hardward. Me and the guy I mentioned are both scientific coders. It is important to be able to optimize to one instruction set. With all major platforms moving to Intel many of us will start inlining SSE/SSE2 code to gain maximum performance. Yeah most application won't. by scientific code will. Games will. Graphics intesive application will.

So yeah OSX isn't standard. But it works. It has all my developer tools and many that I wish I had. I will pay for that. Porting back to Linux is as easy as setting the PATH, LIBRARY, and a few other application specific environment variables. Windows will alway's be the biggest pain in the ass.

And just to clarify I am not really a Mac fanboy...yet. I don't own one and never have. But I will.

Oh and as far as the cool aid...nah. It is christmas time and the local pub as about 150 new Christmas beers in stock. So yeah I am on the "sauce" but it isn't cool aid!!!

Cheers.

That's weird,

[WhiteWolf666]

because IE for mac > IE for Windows.

IE for mac handles CSS better. It also does other things properly, like transparent PNG.

Whatever, I don't care; this just means that us Mac users will operate as an anti-IE economic bloc.

Not like I had that stupid piece of shit (IE) installed on my Mac, anyways.

Re:That's weird,

[Ksevio]

Although IE for mac handles more CSS, it handles it wrong so it's not a gain over the windows version

Translation:

[1336.5]

The one guy at the company that M$ bought that made IE for Mac has chosen to retire.

Could be a big mistake...

[doormat]

Mainly because I expect to see Apple's market share grow as soon as the intel macs get out the door and people start to adopt them. If you figure if their share increases to 5%, plus the ~10% of firefox+opera users, 15% should be enough of an audience for most websites to realize that IE-only designs are the past and that they need to modernize.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[AlXtreme]

5% for any major website should be enough to convince any PHB worth his salt.

I had a conversation about this with my boss some time ago, and stated that our e-commerce websites (very non-tech oriented) had gone over the 5%-boundry when it came to firefox users.

His face went pale. 5% of all users means 5% of ad and sale income. Multiplied by the numbers we get, this is a serious enough difference for him to consider: the difference was more than both our salaries combined. He ordered thorough testing on IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari, and full adherence to web standards some time later.

Gotta love capitalism.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[valmont]

what, in the x86 migration, makes you think Apple's going to attain a sudden, dramatically greater market share? It bewilders me that people keep equating x86 chips to Apple suddenly getting into the commodity hardware business. It's just a processor switch. In fact, Apple's making higher margins on the G5 today than it likely will on x86. Apple's in the business of superior computing, with the costs that go along with that. It will continue to build higher-end machines, with higher margins.

If you tell me "The Mac Mini will cause a gain in market share", then yeah, you have more of a point.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[bogie]

There will be no major growth due to x86. The prices will only be slightly cheaper if at all and 90%+ of mac users will continue to use their computers blissfully unaware of what cpu is actually powering it.

People use Macs because they "just work" in their opinion. They don't buy them because of the IBM cpu inside. They certainly won't start buying them en mass simply because they suddently become "x86 inside".

Make OSX X86 available for $149 for anyone to buy and install on their generic intel box and THEN you'll see some real growth. Of course if hackers can produce the same result for free when OSX X86 goes gold, so be it.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[MKalus]

Why would a new CPU raise Apples Marketshare? Because now suddenly all the Linux people are going to run out and buy Apple HW in order to install Linux on it?

The average user doesn't care what is IN the box as long as it does what they want them to do.

Yeah, maybe Apple gains another percentage point or more, but clearly not because they put an Intel CPU into their machines.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

I've heard a lot of people say they won't buy Macs because they need compatibility. The new Macs should be able to run Windows. That's the ultimate in compatibility.

If they can boot Windows, I think many fewer people will be scared to buy a Mac due to losing compatibility, so more people will probably end up buying.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[pe1chl]

It makes no sense to buy a Mac (at Apple's h/w price level) and then run Windows on it. Especially when that is going to be in the form of "boot Windows".
When you want to run Windows, get a Dell.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[MKalus]

What compatability?

Office? Is around for the Mac and works fine.

What else? Games? Well, fine, get an XBOX.

The point is, 99% of the people who say they can't because of "compatability" are just saying it because they:

1. Don't want a Mac in the first place.
2. Are afraid of change.
3. Have no idea what it actually is they can't live without under Windows.

I regularly exchange files with Windows Users and nobody ever had problems. I have seen more problems between older and newer versions of Office than between Mac and Windows machines.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

You have no idea about the pricing on Apple's Intel hardware, and neither do I. When it debuts, it may be close enough in price to be competitive.

Re:Could be a big mistake...

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

As a Mac user and owner for over a decade who has only owned one PC in his life(for less than a year), and who works with Windows frequently, I agree that the issue of compatibility is drastically overstated.

But a lot of users don't want to buy all new software(and have no idea that Mac software tends to work better anyway).

If Windows users perceive less of a risk, they will, as a whole, be more likely to buy Apple's hardware. And that's what the ability to natively run Windows gives them. A "safety net".

I think the message is sort of redundant...

[Hamster Lover]

Safari has been the default web browser since, what, OS 10.3? Any new Mac users, and that includes myself, running 10.3 or better would never have bothered to download IE for the Mac as Safari is an excellent browser in it's own right. Yes, of course there are still Mac users running OS 9 to OS 10.x and if they can live with an old version of the OS they can certainly live without updates to IE.

The question I have is was the development of Safari sort of self fulfilling? That is, Apple started Safari because they believed that MS would abandon IE (due to the end of the contractual period that required them to produce Office and IE for the Mac) and did MS abandon IE because Apple started Safari?

What!?

[Guey_X]

They are losing market everywhere and now they will cut all their Apple users??? They might not have heard, but Firefox is coming, real quick!

Re:The fabled "switchers"...

[kalidasa]

So, what part of Safari did you not understand? Were you confused by the lack of a "Go" button?

[Troll.]

Smart CIO

[Jaxoreth]

Your CIO really knows his stuff! That's awesome.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[theLOUDroom]

Now it's just a distraction. The Mac is a niche market and always will be and Firefox isn't a real threat to IE - nothing is, or can be, because IE is bundled with Windows.

With a nick like "Toby The Economist" you should know better than to say things like that.

As long as the cost (virtually nil) of getting an alternate browser is exceeded by the benfit, then it is a "threat".

MS is LOSING market share WRT web browsing. Your comments simply don't reflect reality.

Obligatory

[SeaFox]

I, for one, welcome our non-supporting M$ overlords...

As it will teach web developers that there is more to life than Internet Explorer and that they should write pages everyone can read equally.

And that, my friend, is why

[melted]

And that, my friend, is why I believe we'll see an Excel replacement coming out of Apple as soon as next year. They'll have their own word processor, their own presentation program, and their own spreadsheet. Best of all, they'll bundle it all together and sell it for $99.95.

Re:And that, my friend, is why

[Anonymous Writer]

And that, my friend, is why I believe we'll see an Excel replacement coming out of Apple as soon as next year.

Lotus Improv was one of the killer apps on the NeXT platform, one which Jobs took notice of and he had a lot of influence on the product's features. Since so much of OS X came from NeXT, I wouldn't be surprised if an Apple version of this shows up. In fact, IIRC Apple sued ThinkSecret right after they published rumours about Pages, also mentioning that a spreadsheet was in the works. Perhaps Apple sued because they wanted to keep their alleged development of a spreadsheet app under wraps, since it obviously wasn't near completion if they were actually working on one. The thing that struck me about that lawsuit is that ThinkSecret always published rumours about something Apple was about to release without getting sued, without any repercussions up until that point. Maybe they got sued because they published something about a product Apple wasn't ready to release.

Re:And that, my friend, is why

[RichMeatyTaste]

I'm not saying it can't be done, but please repeat after me:

Excel macros, Exchange/Entourage, repeat

Those two "technologies" continue to tie people to Office, and they will until someone takes the crown away. Hate Exchange as much as you want, but it still is used by nearly 50% of Fortune 1000 companies (the next competitor is about 15% behind that number). Plus Exchange 12 will integrate fax and voice messages, and Exchange webmail is going to improve even more. Excel macros are another trojan horse, I know of companies who depend on them for so much crap it is unbelieveable.

IE only is not always due to incompetence

[markdj]

Those of you who think that websites that work with IE only are due to incompetence or stupidity don't understand software development in the real world. It is expensive to test a web site against multiple browsers. It is usually a business decision to test a web site against a limited set of browsers.

Not all browsers render the same code in the same manner. So if you try to use standard coding and that works with all the tested browsers, then the attitude is "Don't blame us if our site doesn't work with your browser - we didn't test with it and we coded to standards. Talk to your browser's developer."

You cannot be certain, even if you are coding to standards, what browsers will render the code correctly (read: as you expected). You have to test all expected browsers, and as I already said, that may cost more than you are willing to spend.

Re:IE only is not always due to incompetence

[bitcastle]

oh cmon, all they would have to do is test in firefox and it would surely work in safari. its just the idiots who sniff for IE for no reason or who use EVIL active x that we hate.

Re:IE only is not always due to incompetence

[markdj]

Not True! Just a few pixels difference can make a huge difference in how things appear on the page: whether they fall off the right side of the screen or hang outside the bounds of boxes, etc. Firefox runs on more than one OS and Safari does not. So differences not only in browsers but in OS graphics systems and font renderings can be huge. Fonts are not always the same number of pixels in size and colors are not always the same exact shade. Additionally each browser on each OS has different bugs (or non-standard features) that can change the way things appear. Firefox is not the be-all and end-all even if it might be the most standard.

Re:IE only is not always due to incompetence

[gerardrj]

The problem is that HTML is not supposed to dictate exactly what the browser shows. Browsers are supposed to let the end user decide what elements to render, in what order and in what fashion. I am supposed to be able to choose my own CSS definitions that should override those provided by the web site.

HTML is not PDF or PostScript, it's a markup language that contains suggestions of how things should be handled. If you need a web site that must align things pixel perfect then you should not be using HTML/CSS for the layout, but some other technology instead (image maps, Flash, clients/server app, etc).

Been dead a long time

[hkb]

IE for Mac has been dead since June 2003. It was even in the version release info that it'd be the last and people should migrate to Safari. What this is saying is that support will end and IE for Mac will be removed from the website shortly.

Also, this has nothing to do with the Intel transition as many people have commented. This was a done deal way before that ever came up.

There is IE for linux

[jasonhamilton]

It's called crossover office. Try it, works like a champ.

Re:Who uses IE on Mac anyways?

[tsaler]

Most people don't have a second computer.

I had some things that I had to do through a website with custom plugins that worked only for Windows and Internet Explorer. Luckily, my fiancee has a ThinkPad running Windows XP, so I was able to do the work on that machine.

However, if I only had my iBook and not access to a Windows machine, I would have been up the creek without a paddle.

Re:winners and losers

[burns210]

oh no?

Ok, so it doesn't ship anymore, but there USE to be an IE for UNIX, which is pretty close.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[Zontar The Mindless]

If the server does all the work and uses nothing but standard CGI, then the web site will work for everyone. Everyone.

Wells Fargo being a case in point. Gets the job done. Works in pretty much everything. (I've not actually tried it in Lynx.) I make a point of thanking them for this every time I talk to them on the phone or in email.

At the other end of the spectrum: ANZ. A bunch of horrid and highly unnecessary and extremely proprietary JavaScript is required even to log in. I like clientside JS for a lot of things - well enough that I've even written a couple of books about it - but this is a prime example when and how NOT to use it.

good

[steelmaverick]

It's not like they're missing out on anything. IE has so many problems, I'd swtich to Firefox or Safari if I had a mac. I only use IE for things that FF cant work with.

No Excuses

[Flwyd]

Now Mac-using graphic designers, confronted with sites that don't work in IE, can claim that if Microsoft wanted their browser to work they would provide it to the people who produce web content. :-)

I guess

[Kortec]

I guess this must be the easiest solution to their blantant ignoring of any and all webstandards. Now if they'd just step up to the plate and stop making windows for PC, all would be well.

Oh the more reason...

[Premo_Maggot]

At me High School we have about 10 G4's with Mac OS X (they're just for video editing) and they all have IE 5 installed, and the school admin (an idiot) has a proxy server up, so no other browers work. As hard as I try to convince her, she won't setup any other browsers, even safari. Maybe this could be the final push.

Re:Confused

[xactoguy]

It is possible using a program such as nLite to create an XP ISO without the executable itself, although the rendering core (Trident) still needs to be installed unless you want a huge headache (as tons of stuff depends on it).

Re:Interesting Problems

[CaptainPotato]

I complained to my bank (one of the St George group of banks in Australia) that Firefox didn't work with their website and was told that this wasn't going to change. A couple of weeks later (and before I had organised myself to switch banks), the secure login section started mysteriously working perfectly using Firefox. I wrote to thank them, but never got a response.

Raising the topic with banks does make a difference - especially if it is suggested to them (in the nicely-worded suggestion) that one might be forced to change banks to one that supports browsers other than IE...

for web development...

[bitcastle]

You know, as a web developer I like to keep it around for testing - since its been frozen in time for awhile - it lets you see how new CSS will look in an old browser or for OS9 users. Most of the time its very readable - much more so than Netscape 4.7 and there are STILL people who use that atrocity! heck my stats show a few NS 4 and IE 4 users every month - damn them - they just see pure crap - makes me look bad - but I gave up supporting anything older than IE 5 - just too much trouble.

how things change

[Knightmare]

I remember back when Netscape was what you used on Linux or the alternative.... lynx, ya right. I had a Sun Ultra 5 in my lab that I installed IE for Solaris on and pulled x sessions from it so that I could surf on what at the time, was the best browser out there. Ah memories... now I avoid IE like the plague, interesting how things have changed.

Now I use firefox on my PowerBook and all is happy in the world, except for a couple of websites that I have to pull TS sessions and use IE for, because IE for the mac doesn't work with them. So this announcement is just the final nail in the coffin for a browser fork that has been slowly dying for years.

R.I.P.

That's a good start!

[rkaa]

Now if they would only end IE on PCs as well..

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[teknomage1]

Porting the processor won't magically make Macs act like evey other system. You still have to deal with OS X's crazy (or at least unique) display APIs or convince a user to install X11.

This is the first shot across the bow.

[eadint]

I dont like IE but there are many times that i may have to use it because the company i work for wont support any other browsers. i am a consultant and i primarilly support macs in the workplace. some of the newer services that i need to use at my company wont even work with IE 5.5 and i have to find a pc. i think that the real statement by MS is that they are starting to see that Apple is a real threat and they are going to war. right now i think thaey are being forced to update and maintain office because of the monopoly suit. but i wouldnt be surprised if they start breaking office for mac and making it unusable or really slow. MS cant stand competition and they did this with corel. i am pretty ceartain that this is the beginning of a war with MS and apple that will escalate, MS will try to kill apple by subversion and sabotoge of office because they cant compete with user interface and security.

The funny part...

[techdavis]

The article this refers to also contains several links for downloading IE for Mac. I guess Microsoft can't read its own post! "Download our product for which we are discontinuing support." Too funny!

What?!

[Durinthal]

How are they supposed to access Windows Update now?

IE For Linux Does Exist!

[Tiberius_Fel]

I used the guide here: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/ and I did get IE working under Fedora Core 4 with WINE installed. A user agent check reported it to be the Windows 98 version of IE6...

Re:IE For Linux Does Exist!

[NanoServ]

Using that tool, as well as some extra fiddling on my part, I managed to get IE 3 through 6 to all work side-by-side.

Re:IE For Linux Does Exist!

[Wingie]

WHY?! WHY?!!!!!!!

That's often not it

[Sycraft-fu]

For example I have problems with American Express's website with my browser of choice (Firefox 1.5). It's not that they won't use it, it's that FF renders something wrong. IE works fine, FF 1.0.7 works fine, but 1.5 screws up the HTML.

It doesn't seem to be delibrate or anything, just some snag they hit. I doubt changing user agent would do anything.

Re:That's often not it

[shking]

.net based servers, by default, serve different html and style sheets to different browsers. It'd be interesting to see if the page renders correctly with the IE (or some other) user agent

Re:That's often not it

[Sycraft-fu]

The user agent has changed almost not at all.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

vs.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7

My guess? It's not doing anything different.

Re:That's often not it

[shking]

Pity. I've seen lots of pages that rendered beatifully with the IE user agent string, but were crap otherwise. You're probably right that it's malformed html which FFox doesn't handle as gracefully as its ancestors

Does the website return a different page with the IE user agent? ...or with the new Firefox agent.

Re:That's often not it

[matthewp]

Sycraft-fu wrote: For example I have problems with American Express's website with my browser of choice (Firefox 1.5). It's not that they won't use it, it's that FF renders something wrong. IE works fine, FF 1.0.7 works fine, but 1.5 screws up the HTML.

It doesn't seem to be delibrate or anything, just some snag they hit. I doubt changing user agent would do anything.

Firefox 1.5 fixed a rendering bug, but amex.com were relying on the wrong behaviour. It looks like they're in the process of fixing that. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29420 1.

So yes, for that site changing your user-agent won't do any good at all.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[EraserMouseMan]

No, "Toby The Economist" is correct. What market share have they lost? About 10% if we are really generous on the Firefox end of things. So that means that IE is used for more than 85% of the worlds Internet browsing. I'd say that "Toby The Economist" was correct when he says that Firefox has a niche market. 10% is only a niche. Anybody would be insane to say that Firefox has gained widespread usage.

In addition, does MS even seem to be nervous at all? Nope. They know that as soon as they release the next version of IE they'll probably get 5% of that back instantly. Firefox really is NOT a threat to IE.

Expecially since most of the people who would be interested in a non-IE browser already are using Firefox by now. Firefox really doesn't have much of anywere else to go now. I know that's a dissapointing comment to you. But it reflects reality.

No

[Sycraft-fu]

It just means they don't care anymore. If Apple isn't going to ship their browser as the default, there's not really a point in releasing it.

It's pretty much assured that the majority of people will always use the default included browser on a platform. They all work pretty good and the non-tech people just aren't going to put the effort in to get a new one for the most part.

Well, you take a marketshare that's small already (by many accounts smaller than FF on Windows usage) and take away the default status, it's just too small to justify the development time.

Re:No

[NutscrapeSucks]

It just means they don't care anymore. If Apple isn't going to ship their browser as the default, there's not really a point in releasing it.

Actually, they stopped caring a long time ago. The Mac/IE development team was dissolved in 2000, and nothing has happened to the browser since the contractually-mandated OS X port in 2001 (except a couple security fixes). It's suprising it took Apple so long to replace it.

Re:No

[moosesocks]

Agreed.

Even for a proficent user, there is no compelling reason to use Firefox over Safari. The fact that safari uses the native OS X windowing toolkits means it integrates seamlessly with the OS, uses less memory, and is more stable than firefox would be.

There's really nothing that firefox has that safari lacks. The only thing that comes to mind are extensions, and the vast majority of users aren't going to ever need those. Standards compliance is pretty much on par with firefox (better in some areas, worse in some, but improving with every release....)

Oh well, it never supported the security holes ...

[joelsanda]

... IE supported on Windows.

Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriously

[Aqua OS X]

Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. At the very least, it's a valuable web development tool. Although it is not identical to Win IE, it has similar idiosyncrasies. Microsoft commonly favors lame proprietary implementations of would-be standards. Heck, look at their support for ECMAScript.... "JScript," not to be confused with "JavaScript." Mac developers need access to this stuff.

The loss of IE on the Mac simply increases a Mac web develope'rs need for a secondary Windows box or VPC for testing. Although that need has always existed to some extent, now it REALLY exists.

You keep using that word...

[Yjerkle]

I do not think it means what you think it means. Unless you have the weirdest job ever, you were in no way obligated to make that joke. It doesn't even make sense on this article! "In Soviet Russia, IE for Mac stops supporting Microsoft," maybe, but "I, for one, welcome our non-supporting M$ overlords?" No.

fantastic news

[ZhuLien]

that's fantastic news. with any luck then it will encourage more companies to support other mac browsers instead of making their sites ie only.

Re:MS gets wise

[farrellj]

I don't think so...It is just the first shot in the battle between Apple OS-X and MS Windows Apple is not going to release OS-X or it's successor until it has debugged it totally on the x86 platform, that is what the Intel/OS-X platfor is really about...Once it has been around and is well debugged in a couple of years, Apple will release OS-X (maybe OS-XI?) for all x86 platforms. And it will eat Microsoft's Lunch.

But first, Microsoft has some cards to play...withdraw the most widely used browser for Mac OS-X, then MS-Office, and all other Mac products. Next the rhetoric will start, and they will FUD OS-X on Intel...And it will fail.

ttyl
          Farrlel

Good Fucking Riddance

[cmason]

And web developers everywhere rejoice!

excellent

[theheff]

This is a great move. IE for mac is absolutely and utterly hideous; anyone who's used different browsers on mac knows that. It really is ancient... it came out during the first generation of iMacs and has themes that actually match the different colors of iMacs that came out at around the time. The most aggravating part of this is working in a IT department that only knows how to use PC, you come in as the mac guy and try to introduce everyone to how things work in mac, and they only browser they even want to try in mac is IE.

Re:Confused

[cb8100]

From the horse's mouth (or is it ass?):

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=293907

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[James Youngman]

If the server does all the work and uses nothing but standard CGI

Of course, it has nothing to do with CGI. The client has no reason to care about how the web server invokes the application logic. What you mean, I assume, is that the web server should confine its interface to the client to just HTML forms and HTTP. While that's all very standards compliant, it doesn't always generate the best usability result. Stop for a minute and realise that it's not possible to implement the nice user interface of Google maps without Javascript, for example. Sure, Google maps works without Javascript, but the interface isn't nearly as slick.

Re:MS gets wise

[kfg]

"Irony: "We can't compete because someone else makes the OS and we don't have full access to it." - Microsoft"

It makes one wonder, doesn't it? Do they actually have a clue what they look like when they say shit like this? If I were the flak given the task of making this statement I'd either look like I was about to die of embaressment, because I would be, or I wouldnt' be able to stop giggling.

Since I don't know whether to laugh or cry, I guess I'll just do both at once.

KFG

Now only if they'd stop updating it for Windows!

[JoeCommodore]

Then they'd solve a lot of thier own problems.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[croddy]

The processor architecture has next to nothing to do with the decision to support OS X. It's the APIs that are different, and switching to Intel processors won't change those APIs. Once you've built support for Carbon or Cocoa (or whatever it's called), the change in CPU architecture is just a matter of telling GCC which target to use.

Not a surpirse

[plazman30]

People seem to think that IE for Mac in some way used the same rendering engine that the Windows verison uses. This is far from the truth. The Mac version of IE is much more standards compliant and has none of the quirks that IE for Windows has, which pretty much means that it helps no one on the Mac side view IE specific web pages.

However, the corporate perception of the death of IE is another matter entirely. Though I would hope that the new popularity of FireFox will show IT mamagers that IE is not the only show in town and letting their Mac user use Safari, Shiira, Opera, Camino (my personal favorite) or Firefox is not that bad an option.

I think the Mac platform has far better browser choices than Windows has now. I was really liking K-Meleon there for a while, but I find the UI needs more work.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[ipfwadm]

While that's all very standards compliant, it doesn't always generate the best usability result. Stop for a minute and realise that it's not possible to implement the nice user interface of Google maps without Javascript, for example. Sure, Google maps works without Javascript, but the interface isn't nearly as slick.

Let's see, between my bank, credit cards, 401(k), and IRA, all of which I access through the web, I can't think of a single time where I wished their interface was "more slick". All I want is the numbers, organized in a fashion that is easy to understand. As the GP said, it's one thing when you're trying to do something new and show off, a la Google maps. But for a financial site, which was the root of this discussion? I don't see a need, and in fact, I think that trying to make the UI more slick actually decreases the usability.

Is Zippy Dead Too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out these wicked effing cute promotional cartoons in an otherwise lame-ass flash based web page that looks optimized for 640x480:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/ie/5/autodem o/c_ienewlook.htm

I know IE is generally considered trash, but the Mac product was actually totally different, and for its time, it was pretty great. It had a lot of unnecessary features, but some of them were actually useful, and you could tell that the creative spirit was there.

I have a feeling that if the Mac BU at Microsoft continued developing IE for Mac, it'd be a kick ass product still.

CHANGE BANK!!

[lucason]

Seriously. Lodge a complaint to your bank that their website only runs with crappy web-browsers and demand they change it.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[j235]

When the intel macs come out, you'll probably be able to run iexplore in wine.

Mac pricing myth

[tepples]

I seem to remember reading a story on Slashdot about a year ago that concluded that a Macintosh computer is not significantly more expensive than a comparable Wintel PC. There's no Mac in the $300 class because Apple doesn't want to associate itself with the bargain-basement $300 Wintel PCs that skimp on parts (no burner, 128 MB RAM, etc) and then nickel-and-dime the buyer for upgrades.

Re:Mac pricing myth

[Weedlekin]

Most name-brand manufacturers gouge customers for RAM upgrades, not just Apple. And it's not as if you have to buy Mac-compatible RAM from them: Googling for "Mac RAM" produces a fair number of people who will sell it to you at a lot less than Apple charge.

Re:Mac pricing myth

[Thorin1977]

For example, why do none of their computers (even the top of the line Dual Dualcore CPU $3299 PowerMac G5) come standard with more than 512MB of ram

Good point on that one. I know a normal user is fine with 512 K ram but once you get processor/ram intense progs running on your puter you would definately like to have the extra 512K kicking around.

Re:Mac pricing myth

[radish]

And a year ago it might have been true. But given next to no upgrades in the Mac world (particularly in the laptop market) this year, and the usual progression in the Wintel world, it sure as hell isn't true any more.

Re:Mac pricing myth

[pmike_bauer]

512 K ????
You know everyone needs at least 640K?

Re:Mac pricing myth

[Thorin1977]

I meant 512 Meg. It was late last night and I probably wasn't thinking to straight when I made that post lol.

Re:Mac pricing myth

[burgess]

Agree. The extra 512K board really makes Xenon ][ blast.

Re:Mac pricing myth

[MoneyT]

For example, why do none of their computers (even the top of the line Dual Dualcore CPU $3299 PowerMac G5) come standard with more than 512MB of ram? And have you priced out Apple's memory upgrades? Sheesh.

Because if i'm buying a Dual core system for my production house and planning to max that puppy out in RAM (all 16 GBs) That means throwing away some of the included RAM. Personaly, I feel better about having to junk two 256 chips than two 512s or two gig chips. And I don't know about you, but if I'm buying RAM I'd rather pay current low prices than the fixed price that Apple payed and has to recoupe (plus profits) 6 months or more ago.

Err, I hate to burst your bubble, but

[Phil Urich]

Your comments sound too optimistic to be taken seriously. Really, really wishing something to be true doesn't make it so.

Perhaps more importantly, I notice certain trends in Apple that, though not that bad now, could be pretty terrible if they end up in a winning position (their tendency to lock out any DAPs other than their own iPods, for instance). Honestly, if they end up beating out Microsoft, that will not usher in a brand new utopian Heaven-on-Earth. It will not be Kingdom Come. If they replace Microsoft, all that will mean is that they'll become the new Microsoft. Even accepting the terribly optimistic view that this prophesied "OS-X for all x86" will simply sweep Windows away, well, you can mark me down on the list of enemies right now in advance if you're so sure, 'cause I'll be a part of the resistance.

Fuckit, I'm tempted to make that my sig, as much as I (a) don't want a sig, and (b) know that it's liable to get every single post of mine from now on modded "flamebait"!

Re:Err, I hate to burst your bubble, but

[igb]

In August, I switched from Solaris to OSX for my desktop.

In September, I bought an iBook for home and switched the kids over from Windows.

Last week I bought a Mac Mini and switched my wife over.

Once I'd pointed out that the menu bar was at the top of the screen, rather than the top of the application, and the window-control buttons were at the top left rather than the top right, she was fine. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where the man in the street's interest in operating systems begins and ends.

ian

Re:Err, I hate to burst your bubble, but

[metamatic]

Apple don't lock out any DAPs.

They support their audio player with their music store. That's it. Plenty of other companies do similar things, and it hardly constitutes "locking out".

There's nothing stopping Real from producing Rhapsody for Mac, with synchronization to iRiver and Creative MP3 players. There's nothing stopping Sony from making a Mac version of their software so you can put ATRAC3 files on your Sony player. There's nothing stopping anyone from having an MP3 player that syncs from the iTunes library; the information is made available as XML, even.

Re:Err, I hate to burst your bubble, but

[vertinox]

Honestly, if they end up beating out Microsoft, that will not usher in a brand new utopian Heaven-on-Earth. It will not be Kingdom Come. If they replace Microsoft, all that will mean is that they'll become the new Microsoft.

I think that is overblown. Microsoft won't just up and go away anytime soon. It would be more like a cold war versus two super powers if at all.

However, given the choice between living under the rule of one or the other, I'd pick Apple. I mean Apple has tended to be not as nasty in the ligitation and business practices as Microsoft (I mean they have but not on that scale and they've been around just as long) and their CEO is a buddhist.

Secondly, I don't expect Apple to force all PCs in the market to conform to have their OS on it. In fact their deadset against the idea and want only Macs to run their OS. Unlike the other company...

It's about time...

[imstanny]

...they ended support for Windows years ago.

It isa question of competence

[jmorris42]

> If your bank's IT staff is so incompetent that it can't figure out how to make a
> standards-compliant webpage, then why would you trust them to not screw up more
> critical systems...

Exactly. It isn't a question of you being annoyed, that is important but not the most important. It raises serious questions about the competence of the IT staff at the instituition. Most IE only pages are running are the result of dependencies. Usually they are displaying the 'seal of insecurity' in the address bar, i.e. .asp, or Netcraft shows them running IIS. Can you sleep at night knowing your money is in the hands of people so incompetent that they don't know how dangerous running IIS is?

Personally I look at the webpage when picking a financial instituition as an indicator of their technical abilities, and these days banks are more an IT operation than anything else. IIS is an instant NO. Client side Java is a major negative, .jsp pages or other indications of server side java is only a minor negative. (Too many .jsp based sites have severe availability problems for me to totally trust it.)

I made an exception for BankOne/Chase because A) my account was at a bank they absorbed and the branch is right across the street from work and B) I sent them an email giving notice that ANY online activity on my account should be considered a fraud attempt on the grounds I would never trust their IIS based online banking.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[greenguy]

As a web designer for a magazine most Slashdot readers will know of, I recently wrote my boss to ask if I could skip testing my site on IE5-Mac entirely. So, no extra Windows box for testing for me. I have a Windows box around, but that's because it belongs to my girlfriend(!), not because I need it for testing. :)

IE for UNIX not for x86

[tepples]

"Microsoft Internet Explorer for Unix" was for Solaris OS on Sun hardware or for HPUX OS on HP hardware, not for anything on x86 hardware.

Re:IE for UNIX not for x86

[slavemowgli]

And it was a crappy product, too, for that matter. I tried IE on a Sparc/Solaris box years ago, just for giggles - crash-prone and buggy (IE, that is, not Solaris ^_~).

www.pimpmysafari.com

[pomo monster]

See subject.

Mactopia's Reasons?

[Propaganda13]

Why is Mactopia ending the downloads at the end of January? I can either see not ending the availability or ending it at the same time as support ends.

I was on the MacIE 6 team when it got canned...

[jbx]

MacIE had one of the strangest and saddest histories I've seen, of any product.

MacIE 5 was an awesome release, critically aclaimed and everything, with a good development team and a strong testing team, that included daily performance measurement.

And yet, almost immediately after 5.0 was released, the MacIE team was redeployed to work on a set-top DVR box. The notion at the time was that the team would continue to do MacIE work in their spare time, since IE 5 was the leader among Mac browsers and no longer needed a full-time team.

The problem with that notion was that WebTV, the team's new bosses, had no reason to actually schedule any time for real IE work. So later, when that particular set-top box got cancelled, the IE team got redployed for other WebTV work, and since this was now out of MacBU's control, nothing could really be done.

3 or 4 years went by before enough people in the Mac division wanted to resume work on IE, and when it looked like we might actually need the technology, as a base for MSN-for-Mac, the IE 6 team was formed. It got a firm OS X-only foundation, a new even more complient browser base, and then suddenly it became apparent that Apple was doing their own browser, because, well, there were lots of small clues, but the big clues was that Apple had started calling the old Mac IE team offering them jobs.

By that time the Mac division had formally committed to MSN-for-Mac-OSX, so it's not like we were completely going to stop work. But a meeting was held internally, the outcome of which was that it didn't make sense to build our own browser if Apple was going to bundle one, because the marketshare and mindshare of the distant-second-place browser, on the distant-second-place platform, wasn't worth pursuing. A week later we had a meeting with high-up people at Apple, where they told us they were doing a browser. And the week after that, after confirming it with Bill Gates, who was reportedly sad but understanding of the decision, MacIE was officially shut down.

MSN-for-MacOSX went ahead, and was also critically acclaimed, but once released, indications were that the number of users was about the same as the number of developers. After that, MacBU concentrated once again on the next Office release, and MacIE has been well and truly and permanently dead ever since.

Over the whole sad journey, the single most surprising thing I ever discovered was from a small conversation that went:

Me: "Look, if it makes sense to devote dozens of people to WinIE, then surely it makes sense to devote half a dozen to MacIE!"

Higher-up: <confused look> "There aren't dozens of people on WinIE. WinIE had some great people on it! We need those great people on products that make money!"

Me: "Then why on earth did we pursue IE in the first place? Just so that the DOJ would sue us?"

Higher-up: <confused look>

Some day I hope to get a proper answer on our motivation to do WinIE and MacIE in the first place. It seems to be that we were scared of not having control of the HTML standard. And indeed, now that Firefox is gaining traction, Microsoft has added more people to WinIE again.

Epilogue: All of this made it a lot more easy for me to quit and go work at Google
Reminder: I may or may not be leaving some parts out for NDA reasons.

Re:I was on the MacIE 6 team when it got canned...

[Anonymous Coward]

> MacIE had one of the strangest and saddest histories I've seen, of any product

Actually, I think the CodeWarrior history may give IE a run for its money in the strageness/saddness department.

Re:I was on the MacIE 6 team when it got canned...

[jbx]

Jimmy Grewal posted a follow-up to this on his blog, which covers some extra points:

http://www.jimmygrewal.com/?p=187

A lot of what he says is true; but the story is more complex than this and there were many other factors that came into play. Issues which he doesn't cover...primarily because he wasn't working on the product much until the last few months of development:

        * - Mac IE was the first real browser running on Mac OS X. We had it running on Developer Preview 2 and it shipped on the Public Beta CD-ROM. That was a great engineering achievement but it came at a very high price. Developing for OS X in those early days was a nightmare and we spent so much time struggling with OS bugs and changing APIs that precious time that could have been used to improve the product was wasted just trying to maintain compatibility with each new beta release of OS X.
        * - Apple was a pain in the ass sometimes. For a company with such great PR, they really were very unprofessional and treated developers poorly. I know that the OS X transition was tough, but there are so many stories I could tell of stupidity at Apple and policies which made no sense...but I won't. I'll just say that Apple had a lot more involvement in the development of Mac IE and it's eventual end than Jorg ["jbx"] gives them credit for. There were times during the last two years of working at Microsoft that I really hated Apple's management...which was very difficult for me being such a loyal fan of their products and having so many friends who worked there.
        * - No clear direction from our management was the last major factor which Jorg touched upon but is important to mention again. Towards the end, we had some major changes in management at the MacBU and the new team was inexperienced both with the products they were managing and how to deal with Apple. They were further handicapped by lack of clear direction by our execs who were too busy worrying about AOL, the DOJ, and our stock price.

Anyway, enough about the history. Mac IE is dead, and it's up to Apple and the Mozilla team to continue to innovate for us Mac users. Sadly, there are still many very useful features in Mac IE that neither company has replicated in their browsers and there are still too many sites which don't look right in Safari. I remember calling up CNN and ESPN and getting them to fix problems in their websites...it worked and I hope Apple has a group of people doing the same thing.

Since Microsoft will no longer be offering Mac IE 5 for download on their website, I'm going to provide a community service by linking to it here. It has not been totally replaced and at least I need a place to be able to download it from for my own personal use...but you'll have to know what to click on to download it. ;-)

If you ever want to know who the people behind Mac IE 5 were, just type "about:tasman" in the address bar of Mac IE and you'll get a list of the people who put their heart and soul into making it such a remarkable and successful product.

I have to laugh (and cry) a bit at Jimmy's comment concerning Apple's management. Apple has screwed over developers time and time again, even while at the same time giving them lots of lip service and spending lots of time and money on developer programs. The tip of the iceberg: no Mac program written prior to 1999 will run - at all - on the new Intel-based Macs. In fact, most 2001 programs won't either. (By contrast, many 1984 apps *do* run on today's machines) More to the point: A Mac developer from 1998 who was 100% up-to-date on Apple's technologies will find today that those technologies have all been either deprecated (in favor of Cocoa or Intel) or outright eliminated (intelligent memory management through Handles, trap-patching, MixedMode expertise). It's all part of Steve Jobs' "they have no respect for the status quo" - a nice quote until you discover yourself at the receiving end of it.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[fyngyrz]

You're exactly right, I meant HTML forms when I said CGI.

As for the rest, I was specifically talking about critical applications, like banking. I have no objection to client side stuff for fooling around.

Support is easier

[muchmusic]

I am very happy about this development. I have many headaches with IE on the mac - especially to do with speed complaints. That browser had not been updated except for compatability code for over three years, which for the internet is far too long. Customers expect better, but because microsoft continued to present IE for mac as a current product on their mac page (microsoft.com/mac) customers continued to download and use it as their primary browser.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[berndtj]

No, the PROBLEM is that all browsers don't use the same client side script standard. Javascript should be a write once run anywhere language. Sadly, it is not.

Client-side scripting is integral to the progression of the web, and web sites and applications going forward. While I agree that putting all of the logic on the server side is the only way to ensure that your application is browser independent, the PROBLEM is not client-side scripting in general.

Javascript vs. Jscript

[bwoodring]

Both are implementations of an ECMA standard, and Microsoft's is perfectly good. They can't call it Javascript because that (was/is) a Netscape trademark, but it doesn't really matter, because Javascript is a TERRIBLE name for that language. It really has nothing to do at all with Java except for some similar, C style, syntax. Now, perhaps Firefox has added some functionality to Javascript and Microsoft needs to catch up a little, but fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with their implementation.

Re:Javascript vs. Jscript

[Aqua OS X]

I'm not saying there's anything "wrong" with their implementation... however, I am saying that Mac web developers absolutely need -access- to their EMCA script implementation. Among other things.

Re:Javascript vs. Jscript

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, JavaScript is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, not Netscape. :)

Re:Javascript vs. Jscript

[Poltras]

Are we talking about Firefox here? Because as far as I remember, Firefox was the one using 115Mb of memory while IE was more or less steady at 20-30.

Re:Javascript vs. Jscript

[Kippesoep]

The memory leaks are inherent in the design of JavaScript, not MS' implementation: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2005/02/ja vascript_memo.html.

Re:Javascript vs. Jscript

[MikeFM]

Did you ever code JS for Mac IE? Ick! It's actually worse than coding JS on the Windows version. It's a product that is outdated and needs to die. Safari, Opera, and Firefox all run much better on Mac than IE does. Mac IE was pretty good at one time but since they abandoned it it's just been rotting.

Re:Javascript vs. Jscript

[Goaway]

No, it's still the implementation that sucks. The article you link to doesn't support your claim, either.

Well, this *is* slashdot...

[Llywelyn]

Welcome to slashdot. You must be new here!

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[theLOUDroom]

No, "Toby The Economist" is correct.

About what? Be specfic.

10% is only a niche.

It may look small compared to a monopoly, but that doesn't make it a niche. Say you control 10% of the market for eggs, milk or bread... you're a pretty big player.

Anybody would be insane to say that Firefox has gained widespread usage.

This is a ridiculous statement. They haven't monopolized the market, but 10% is certainly "widespread usage".

In addition, does MS even seem to be nervous at all? Nope.

This statement is made completely unsupported.

They know that as soon as they release the next version of IE they'll probably get 5% of that back instantly.

As is this one.

Expecially since most of the people who would be interested in a non-IE browser already are using Firefox by now.

And this one too.

The facts of the issue as as follows:
Firefox/Mozilla's share is growing
IE's share is falling

It's is possible to argue that this will change but it is silly to state that this situation poses no threat. The simple fact that they are losing market share shows that there IS a threat.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[klancaster]

I develop on a mac for customers that mostly use IE. IE 5 /mac was too far behind IE 6+ for me to use in development, so I already had to keep a windows box running. The problem is that my wife, like many others thanks to MS asp.net, HAS to access her work site using IE, and IE 5 worked for her. Now I'm going to have to keep her on the Windows machine just so she can do her work.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[Antique Geekmeister]

I agree. Moreover, sites that stick to basics and use straightforward HTML and CGI load faster, work on far more configurations of even the approved browser, are easier to fix, and don't get created by vaporware consultants who promise the stars and the moon to their clients but then charge New York taxi rates for the trip there.

I've actually told a consultant that I wouldn't pay them if they kept insisting on JavaScript pop-ups instead of a plain old clickable link, which they insisted on doing even after I introduced them to the vision impaired company lawyer who hates these things because they screw up the text->speech software that lawyer uses.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[EraserMouseMan]

You enjoy arguing from generalities, don't you? "Firefox is a threat." Sure. But a tiny one. "Microsoft is losing market share." Sure, but only a tiny bit of it. "Firefox is growing" Sure, but only by very small percentage (barely out of the single digits).

And 10% is NOT widespread. It's a freakin' browser! It's not AIDS or the Bird Flue! If 10% is widespread wtf is 90%? 90% must be "By far the most popular, powerful, omniscent, all-conquering web browser". Do you realize that IE has 90% of the market share and hasn't even changed much in 3-4 years? Firefox puts out a brand new browser that is a lot faster with tons better features and only manages to garner 10%. My friend, we have a problem here. And the problem is that People use what they have. People aren't going to bother downloading Firefox when the Firefox fan-boys tout trivial features like tabbed browsing. It's just not worth the trouble for 90% of web surfers.

So like "Toby The Economist" said (correctly), Firefox will never catch up because IE comes packaged with Windows.

Firefox is a superior browser and it is FREE! Why isn't the other 90% clamoring to download it? Because 90% of people just don't care. Whatever they already have is just fine with them. Oh, they just need to be educated as to the evils of IE? Tell me about it. About the time you start to see some success with that IE 7.0 will be released and MS will assure everybody that it's the most secure browser. Then Firefox is back to square one.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[fyngyrz]

the PROBLEM is not client-side scripting in general.

Actually, it is. The presumption that you can get exactly the same execution environment running on any arbitrary set of operating systems, with any arbitrary set of user permissions (or not), with any arbitrary amount of ram, screen real estate, screen bit-depths, and so forth is not only blindly optimistic, it is outright foolish. In order to even remotely approximate that result, you're going to have to say "But we don't care about this, because it's too old, and we don't care about that, because the environment is impractical, and we don't care about this other because the userbase is too small" — in each case, screwing some otherwise perfectly legitimate banking customer out of some subset of services you offer everyone else, or requiring them to migrate or otherwise compensate for your poor design.

There are browsers that may not have Java (for instance, browsers in PDAs and phones and the PSP and so forth) or if they do, it's jammed into such a restricted environment that typically, no one ever thinks the design through for such a thing. My Palm TX, for instance, has a pretty cool browser on it, and with the display the TX has, it can do surprisingly well on HTML/FORMS pages, wrapping and punting as need be, but — it falls apart on anything that requires client side work, because it just isn't that capable. Now I grant you, it would be wonderful if everything was that capable, but the fact is, everything isn't and what we're talking about here is the idea that when it comes to critical information — banking, bills, taxes, legal materials, college applications.. the "must have" interactions of everyday life — then Java, ActiveX and all those digital-divide generating technologies should be passed over in favor of "it just works."

Now, you take issue with all this (obviously) and so feel that Java and ActiveX and whatever client-loading tech of the day might be on deck is a good thing, and I will give you that... the day you can show that whatever it is you have cobbled up will work in all the environments I mentioned, as well as in the web browser soon to be crammed into my custom beer mug, bought to celebrate the birth of God's only son, Santa, for Saturnalia/2007. And the one in the back of my RealDoll/2010(tm)'s head.

Until then, the nature of client-side applications is that of restricting the user base to some degree, and in the case of the types of uses I mentioned above, as far as I can see, any restriction at all is a fool's act. Unless you can point out some end-result in those areas that you can achieve with client-side processing that you can't get to with server-side processing. I'll grant that there may be something, but I've not heard of it thus far. It seems to me that you need input, output, and security, and that's the end of it. Anything else is superfluous at best, and disenfrancising at worst.

How about this??

[razorx100]

Now if only they would say the same thing about the Windows based version of Internet Explorer... How 'bout this: ' the webpage suggests 'that Windows users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or even your kids LeapFrog., because let's face it... Internet Explorer stanks!'"

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[fyngyrz]

are easier to fix

...this excellent reponse brings up another point that I didn't cover in my initial post. When there is a bug in a server side application, the entire userbase will help you find it. For most bugs, this will result in you finding it sooner. Secondly, when you fix it, you only have to fix it once. Thirdly, you don't have to nearly as much debugging of the client system, which you may not be able to replicate, instead you are almost exclusively debugging the server system, which is right there in your lap 24/7, or at least accessible to you under those terms, hopefully. It is also nice that no client side "caching" of scripting or other pervasive and active issue (like a cached script) will befuddle your attempts to resolve the problem(s).

As for pop-ups... man, don't even get me started on popups.

Ending IE for Mac...?

[stupid grinch]

That's nothing: They took pork off the menu at the local Muslim vegetarian restaurant.

Re:MS gets wise

[moorewr]

dude! They needed *write* access!

How else do you put traps in for your competitors software?

Good, but...

[dghcasp]

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of Mac/OS 9.x computers out there, and IE is about the only browser available for them. Safari needs OSX. Camino needs OSX.

Someone else made an (admittidly funny) remark about "just email those two users." In reality, for the place I work, our server logs show 6% of all accesses come from IE 5.x on MacOS 9.x systems.

I'll be very happy when IE 5 finally goes away, but on the other hand, I still see the occasional hit by Netscape 4.x in the logs...

Re:Good, but...

[gerardrj]

iCab.

www.icab.de

Re:Good, but...

[GrahamCox]

Well, this announcement has no impact whatsoever on Mac OS 9 users who are already using IE 5 - it won't stop working. Since the OS itself isn't even supported by Apple, having one application on there no longer supported doesn't change your situation very much.

Re:Good, but...

[zerocool^]

on the other hand, I still see the occasional hit by Netscape 4.x in the logs...

Try working for a university Comptuer Science department.

Our faculty are an odd mix of "Stuck in the 80's/90's" (some of them "only" still use netscape 4.7, others are still wondering where their VMS went), and "So far ahead it's obscure" (as in, using a browser you haven't even heard of, because they sort of wrote it last week). Our server logs for our internal website are interesting.

~Will

sue the bank(s)?

[happycorp]

Some banks force us to use IE, a brower that is known to be fairly insecure, for our _financial_ transactions.

Suppose someone tried a lawsuit (class action version??) against one of these banks.

It might not win, but it might cause other banks in particular to change their ways and recommend more secure access methods.

We need an online db of IE-only corp. websites!

[totro2]

Hi all,

I keep hearing "my bank doesn't support firefox", or "The Gap doesn't support firefox". Which bank? Which banks in particular? What other retailers in particular? I want an online list I can refer to!

Where is a webpage I can go to see the list of all the major corporations who develop IE-only websites? This way I can avoid patronizing them with my business altogether. It would save me the time of switching to other competitors (who do "get it") later. It would be nice if each entry in this online db also had a link beside it to where I (and others like me who "get it") can file my complaint about non-conformance to W3C strandards.

If such a page existed and became common knowledge, no corporation in their right mind would want to be on such a list. This public badge of shame would prompt them to hire some real web developers, not loser IE-monopoly-developers who are impersonating real web developers.

Re:We need an online db of IE-only corp. websites!

[slavemowgli]

You may want to check Mozilla's Bugzilla and look into the "Tech Evangelism" category.

It's about time!

[beemishboy]

When trying to develop to each and every one of our users, we kept trying to make it at least non-broken in mac ie. We found it amusing that its default homepage, msn.com, doesn't even work on mac ie.
The javascript rendering is so bad that one of the javascript calendars we tried out would consistently crash the browser.
May it rest in peace alongside Netscape 4.x.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[jasonditz]

Since they weren't really keeping up with current versions of IE this isn't a huge deal... it's not like your copy of IE5 is going to stop working.

I'm a web developer, and by and large I just try to do things in a reasonable way and avoid confusing tricks that might get wonky on poor implementations. I've only ever run into one issue with IE doing this, and that was specific to the Mac 9.x verison.

Re:MS gets wise

[starfishsystems]

Irony: "We can't compete because someone else makes the OS and we don't have full access to it."

It says something about the extent of the doublethink that it must take to get through a day working at Microsoft.

All that stuff you learn in introductory software engineering courses about modularity, cooperating subsystems? Forget all of it. For one thing, it's a very corrupting concept, cooperation. It leads to terrible things like interoperability, you know, where one component could actually be replaced by another, functionally equivalent, one? Maybe one made by a competitor or something, maybe more secure, maybe more scalable, all much too risky to bear thinking about. Don't go there.

So while you're toiling away, dreaming up more useless features, practicing not thinking about modularity, of course your first impulse when developing an application will be to maximize how much of the operating system needs to be conformed around the desired level of cuteness you want for the application. Then you get what Steve Ballmer proudly calls "integrated innovation" meaning the rules are whatever we say they are.

So, you don't get to keep your job by developing a web browser that just competently and securely renders web pages like any other graphical application. The real focus must always remain squarely on innovation. You know, like ActiveX. Where's the ActiveX in MacOS? It's like, useless. The system is not integrated at all.

Actually, this is a non-issue....

[King_TJ]

Truthfully, the only things Microsoft has been offering Mac users are applications that allow the Mac to be more "Windows-like". IMHO, Microsoft would never kill off a profitable project on the Mac side that helps continue to validate the Windows counterpart. I think they realize that the minority of people out there using Macs have spent considerable amounts of money and put up with a "2nd. class status" in many ways, just because they didn't want to "run with the pack" that uses Windows PCs. The most effective thing Microsoft can do with these people is to help make their Macs easy to use along-side of Windows systems by giving them a few key pieces that help keep a "bridge" between the 2 platforms. Otherwise, they've just completely kissed these potential customers goodbye.

I mean, take a look at what Microsoft *does* offer for the Mac:

1. VirtualPC (a way to sell a Mac user a Windows software license - ingenious!)
2. MSN Messenger for OS X (make sure they're able to chat with Windows users)
3. Windows Media Player for OS X (help keep the proprietary Windows media format a "valid option" for the Mac community)
4. Remote Desktop Client for OS X (make sure you can still use that PC remotely from your Mac's desktop!)

Of course, Office falls right in line with the rest of these. (Make sure a Mac user feels comfortable working with all the proprietary Microsoft file formats for Office documents, and can pull mail from an MS Exchange mail server with Entourage)

Continuing to offer IE for the Mac accomplishes none of these goals for MS anymore, so why would they care about it? Just because a Mac has IE as a browser on it doesn't help a Mac user "see things the MS way" at all. If anything, it casts them in a bad light because it's slow and buggy compared to something like Safari or FireFox.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[MKalus]

Even if they use it they don't know it.

I have worked in Dev Shops (as a SysAdmin etc.) and we had Unix developers who didn't know the first thing about the Unix they were programming on.

Guess this means one less bug to fix!

[whorfin]

I have a bug report logged against my product saying that Mac IE 4.5 doesn't render one of our pages correctly because of the CSS on it.

I don't think I'll be trying to make it compatible now.

Re:The fabled "switchers"...

[MKalus]

So much Mac software is unintuitive.

I find Windows utterly non intuitive after spending the last 8 years working mainly in Unix and for the past four years in Mac environments (at home and at work).

Windows behaves odd at times and to do certain things is "politely put" utterly clumsy.

Guess "intuitive" is what you "grow up" with.

Re:MS gets wise

[MKalus]

It has been said before, and it will be said again: Apple has NOTHING absolutly NOTHING to win by releasing an unbundled OS X version, if anything they shoot themselves in the foot by doing so.

HOW would they gain by selilng OS X? They subsidize the software development by selling hardware. You have to sell a LOT of boxes in order to pay for software development.

Much worse: The Slashdot crowd constantly forgets that Joe Shmoe doesn't CARE what OS he is running as long as s/he can do what s/he wants to do on the computer.

Nobody is going to go out and buy Mac OS X, throws windows of his machine and switches, if people would be doing this, Linux would be way further on the Desktop.

Licensing it to the likes of Dell? Doubtful, they would just create a direct competition which would undermine the HW business, and how WELL licensing works can already be seen in the HP iPod deal which came to an end and didn't work so well for HP (and I doubt very much that Apple would give Dell or HP or Leonov any freedom whatsoever).

Look at the iTunes phone from Motorola, the thing is crippled beyond believe, and that is by design. Whatever / Whoever wants to play with Apple would need to release a product that is inferior to what Apple is selling themselves.

So no, as much as it may be a wet dream for most Slashbots, chances are close to nil that Apple will ever release OS X as a box to the masses.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[theLOUDroom]

You enjoy arguing from generalities, don't you?

You've been making unsupported arguments, and putting forth some really wild statements.

And 10% is NOT widespread.

Yes it is. You seem to have a hard time with the concept that something doesn't have to push all its competitors out of the market to be widespread.

If 10% is widespread wtf is 90%?

A monopoly. Monopolies are a bad thing and we don't want them. You argument seems to be that Firefox will never monopolize web browsing therefore it's a "niche". It's silly.

The Ford F series trucks are the best selling vehicles in America, but they haven't come anywhere close to monopolizing the road. This doesn't make them a niche.
It's the way markets work. People want different things.

Firefox is a superior browser and it is FREE! Why isn't the other 90% clamoring to download it?

People ARE downloading it. Market share for Firefox is going up and IE is going down.

So like "Toby The Economist" said (correctly), Firefox will never catch up because IE comes packaged with Windows.

This is NOT a self-validating argument. It's perfectly possible that people will use something besides what comes on their pc. The burden of proof is really on you with this because you're saying that something will never happen.
Still, here's an obvious example of why this argument is a load of crap: Internet Service Providers. MSN comes with windows. MSN does not have most subscribers. Therefore, just because something "comes with windows" does not mean automatic market dominanace.
Heck MSN only has 10% of the subscribers AOL has so they're just a tiny niche right? :P

Re:MS gets wise

[farrellj]

Only one possible fly in your ointment...How much money is Apple making from iPODs, iTunes, and such? How much are they making from the computer hardware? And what are the projections for the next 5 years?

Inquiring minds want to know!

One hint, why did IBM get out of the PC business?

ttyl
          Farrell

Not "Joe Average"

[Zhe Mappel]

There is nothing in the Apple universe to replace MS Office at the moment for Joe Average -- NeoOffice/J (OpenOffice for the Mac) works fine for me, but most Apple users I know gag on it not being completely aquified.

That's a contradiction in terms. Joe Average doesn't care about anything being aquified; that's why he's on a Wintel box.

You are talking instead about Joe Delicate, an aesthete too prissy to touch OOo or NeoOffice/J without aquification. In fact, OOo is a perfectly fine platform on OS X, with or without X11, as anyone who actually writes on it quickly discovers--as you appear to have done. It's also free and not Microsoft, two considerable advantages.

If some Mac users need a blue scrollbar before they'll use a word processor, so be it. Microsoft is happy to take their money. ;-)

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[LichP]

Actually, I suspect that the idiosyncratic similarities are more along the lines of IE5 Mac attempting to respond similarly to IE6 Win for quirks mode. Strict mode, on the other hand, is something else entirely, and IE5 Mac is in many ways a far superior CSS2 implementation than IE6 Win. If anything, IE5 Mac follows CSS2 more closely than just about any other browser - Firefox and Safari's implementations are much closer to CSS 2.1. This leads to some fairly unique behaviour on IE5 Mac's part where some of the more erroneous parts of CSS2 have been implemented quite strictly (width of floats springs to mind as an example).

Drawing a direct comparison between IE5 Mac and IE6 Win is therefore just not a correct thing to do - they are really quite different browsers in many ways, and testing a site in IE5 Mac is certainly no substitute for testing in IE6 Win in any circumstance.

Re:MS gets wise

[MKalus]

IBM got out of the PC Business because everybody was making PC.

IBM had NOTHING that differenciated them from Dell, HP or any other Asian PC maker.

Apple has Mac OS X (as one thing) to differentiate them.

Yes, iPods and iTunes are making them money right now, but I doubt very much that Apple stops making computers anytime soon. IF they would turn into The iPod Company(TM) why even bother with Mac OS X? It would be way more consequent for them to stop anything that has to do with computers and just concentrate on "portable devices".

Michael

Ouch!

[theolein]

While I can only speak for my employer, we test against IE for Windows and Mac OS, Firefox on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, Safari, and Opera on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

If you're testing against Safari on Linux and Windows, then I think I can perhaps begin to understand the depths of your problems. ;-)

Re:Ouch!

[Crayon Kid]

If you're testing against Safari on Linux and Windows, then I think I can perhaps begin to understand the depths of your problems. ;-)

He never said that, check the GP post again.

Good riddance

[OpperNerd]

I did not use it anyway. Camino's the way!

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[indiechild]

You're kidding right? I'm glad to see IE5/Mac go, it had idiosyncracies that were completely different and far more maddening than IE/Win. The browser that always needed the most hacks and workarounds was always IE5/Mac.

As a Mac and Windows user and a webdesigner who creates standards-compliant cross-browser compatible websites, I'm glad to see the demise of IE5/Mac. It was great in its day in 2001, but since then it has been a great big thorn in the side of web developers.

Re:MS gets wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right. They do have access to the source code of WebKit, but what they need is access to the whole OS,
because, as everyone knows, a browser has to be integrated tightly into the whole OS..
You know, for all those features like ActiveDesktop, remotely invoked installation of dancing monkeys and weather widgets and so on.
I mean, how could anybody use a browser without these?

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[acxr is wasted]

Just curious, but how do you ascertain that your site will display properly in IE 4-5-6-7? I build sites on a Mac and I'd love to shut the frustrating IE compatibility check out of my life.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[Thorin1977]

One key thing that is a big reason for my wife using IE though is that it supports JAWS for windows which is screen reading software. When she uses JAWS on Firefox it reads 1/4 of the content at best. I personally like using firefox better than IE but my wife is not a newbie to computers and is restricted to using IE just because of no support for JAWS in Firefox.

Re:winners and losers

[ttys00]

I had IE running on Debian under Wine a year ago, with Javascript working fine, for an IE-only site (Accipiter's ad-tracking web app) I was forced to use for work.

Microsoft recommends the use of khtml!

[sheimers]

In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine Microsoft recommending to use a khtml-based browser in stead of IE, and now it really happened!

Is MS killing their own business?

[GhodMode]

When I observe what's happening in the computer world, I see a many companies working really hard to make life easier for people who want an alternative. Some of them are even large, relatively stable companies such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, Novell, etc...

I try not to sound anti-Microsoft most of the time. Some people actually consider my advice valuable enough to help them make their purchasing decisions with regard to technology. So, I try to remain unbiased.

What really makes me smile, though, is when the largest and, supposedly, most stable of technology companies helps to make it easier to switch to an alternative.

In this case, Microsoft has effictively told all Apple computer users "We don't consider you valuable and we don't want your business."

It is not insignificant just because IE is free software. Consider the companies who do the majority of their business through the Internet. They also find it easier to choose an alternative. Now, if they want to keep their Apple customers and utilize the latest technology in their Web sites, they only need to design their Web sites according to a specification (W3C) which is supported by browsers on every platform. Reduce cost and development time with just a single site, without cross-browser tricks, and it works everywhere... Ok, that's ideal, not real, but it's an ideal that Microsoft has been effectively working against while every other browser development team works towards it.

I do not wish to digress too far, but consider this: Safari is based on a KHTML code base, which is derived from the KDE project, which is primarily used on the Linux platform, which is seen as a threat to Microsoft's business.

Every day there are new problems where legitimate businesses, who purchased all of their software legally are told that they need to pay a license fee to continue using it.

Even home users have problems. Given the nature of the latest version of the most common operating system, it's necessary to format the hard drive and re-install occasionally. But if you do it more than three times, you have to call Microsoft and convince them that you actually purchased your software so that you can have a new activation code. This one has personally affected me. Even though I have legally purchased more copies of Windows XP than I am using, I use a cracked "Corporate Edition" of the software because I don't want to deal with the hassle of Activation.

The company with the largest market share keeps irritating their paying customers. Businesses are already choosing alternatives in droves. Soon, even average users won't even want to bother with them.

Well... Apple users... Where do you want to go today?

--
-- Ghodmode

Re:MS gets wise

[PHPfanboy]

I don't agree with your post much, although it is clear that the reason MSFT put 100 million into Apple a few years back was to prevent them becoming a total monopoly.

I think classing Apple as a desktop OS company is ignoring developments of the past 3-4 years.

I also think that people wanting to use Linux on the desktop won't use Apple. Most Apple users are individuals/small work groups and home users (like me), so you're not going to get the hundreds of corporate desktops you need to challenge Microsoft by replacing them (hint: start with the system integrators who have the 000's of outsourced desktop maintenance contracts with large corporates).

I also don't believe that if Apple did not exist there would be hordes of developers lining up for a desktop Linux product. Most open source projects are understaffed anyway, to expect loads of people to fall out of the woodwork and start working on improving a desktop (as well really understanding user interfaces and *shudder* marketing) is IM-Not-So-HO fanciful.

I think that you receiving 5 insightful for your post is damn impressive, but that's just my opinion.

Luxury...

[TractorBarry]

> Microsoft Ends IE for Mac

(Glances at nearby MAC users) You lucky, lucky bastards.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[Toby The Economist]

>> Now it's just a distraction. The Mac is a niche market and always will be and
>> Firefox isn't a real threat to IE - nothing is, or can be, because IE is
>> bundled with Windows.

> With a nick like "Toby The Economist" you should know better than to say
> things like that.

Really? :-)

> As long as the cost (virtually nil) of getting an alternate browser is
> exceeded by the benfit, then it is a "threat".

This is not true, because the vast majority of users do not know how to install a new browser on their PC. In fact, Firefox could even *give* people money to install - it still wouldn't help when users don't know HOW to install.

Your assumption is that the economic factor is the primary factor in deciding market share. This is not the case.

> MS is LOSING market share WRT web browsing. Your comments simply don't reflect
> reality.

FF is up to about 10% market share and has been holding steady. All the people who know how to install a new browser have done so. IE dominates the market with approximately an 85% share.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[gnuLNX]

The little porting I have done for my Qt based OpenGL app has been as simple as setting the QTDIR varialbe and typing make. The key is to use a cross platform window system. Screw Macs special API's, Windows APIs, and X's apis. That is what I pay the boy's/girls at troll tech to take care of. I have to much else on my plate to worry about this. So if you are programming with Qt as your windowing system it is pretty much a recompile. I am sure there are a few kinks I will run into. I have only done limited testing. Others using Qt seem to be having a pretty simple time with it.

Re:winners and losers

[gnuLNX]

"why don't you just put Mac OS x86 on your PC?"

Got a place were my business can purchase that? Sure when I was younger I could justify pirating a copy, but with a business to run and the liability involved...nah. I will just purchase the Intel Mac when it comes out.

"If your CPU handles SSE2 instructions, you should do it, if you want so much to get into it"

It does and i have been into it for quite a while. I am just not releasing any products with SSE inlined at this time....probably soon tho.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[gnuLNX]

"Once you've built support for Carbon or Cocoa (or whatever it's called), the change in CPU architecture is just a matter of telling GCC which target to use."

Agreed. But why would a cross platform developer use Carbon or Cocoa? My shop uses Qt and I know quite a few others who seem to be jumping on the Qt bandwagon. However when it comes to code optimization the processor that you are coding for becomes very important. Should I use float or double? What vectorization support does the processor have...will they have it in the future? My main point is that with OXS being BSD based and running Intel it will surely be easier to support Linux/Mac that Linux/Windows as I now do. Although I have just about sreamlined the processes. I have being toying with the idea of putting together a good cross platform developer web site...just don't have the time.

Re:MS gets wise

[gnasher719]

'' How much money is Apple making from iPODs, iTunes, and such? How much are they making from the computer hardware? And what are the projections for the next 5 years? ''

The answers: 1. Tons. 2. Tons. 3. iPod will grow quicker for a while, but when it gets closer to saturation, Macs will take over again.

Microsoft is reacting to a direct competitor...

[Warlock7]

With the huge upcoming change to Intel processors, Apple is becoming a direct competitor against Microsoft. Microsoft is reacting in it's best interest. They are removing their support from what can no longer be seen as a merely possible, but a very real, threat to their bottom line.

The hardware architecture has always been a justification for Microsoft to support Apple because the architecture difference was always a justification for why Windows was perceived to be faster/better than Apple, now they're going to be on a level playing field and Microsoft will have no more excuses available for their mediocrity.

Once it can be shown that two different platforms competing on the same hardware with the same software can be compared Microsoft will have to get off their asses and actually compete and innovate.

This is a frightening idea for a monolithic company with a history of slow progress and very little innovation. Apple has Microsoft scared.

How much longer will it be before we see Office for Apple killed too?

Shucks!

[waif69]

I guess that means I get no upgrades from microshaft on the browser that I don't use... bummer...

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[x3v0]

Wells Fargo being a case in point. Gets the job done. Works in pretty much everything. (I've not actually tried it in Lynx.) I make a point of thanking them for this every time I talk to them on the phone or in email.

Unless you are a big business business. It seems Well's Fargo figures that they only use IE. I went to their commerical portal and clicked on ">CEO Sign On". I'm using Firefox 1.0.7 on Linux and it gave me this:

Browser not allowed. You cannot access the CEO portal with your current browser. Please upgrade your browser or download a new browser now.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[Mouse42]

Microsoft is only ending support for IE Mac... not making it magically delete off everyone's machines.

If it is working for your wife now, it can continue to work for her needs. She'll only need to switch to a newer version of IE (and thusly, the windows box) if her work place's webmaster stops supporting IE Mac and makes and incompatable upgrade.

Re:winners and losers

[zerocool^]

You joke, but at one point, Microsoft did release a LOT of products for "other" platforms. There was an IE version for Solaris at one point, just as Microsoft also released a binary of Apache with Front Page Extentions for SVR4 (Solaris) at one point.

~Will

Re:MS gets wise

[anthony_dipierro]

Sommer said that, with the emergence of Apple's Safari browser, Microsoft felt that customers were better served by using Apple's browser, noting that Microsoft does not have the access to the Macintosh operating system that it would need to compete.

Translation: We can't intentionally add bugs to the Macintosh Operating System to break or slow down our competitors products like we do on Windows.

Alternative translation: We don't have a monopoly on Macintosh computers, so we can't use the same anti-competitive practices that we use on Windows, and of course we can't compete on the merits of our product.

But I need IE!

[CrazyTalk]

Yes, 99% of the time I use Safari on the Mac. But certain sites REQUIRE IE - financial sites for example, and most importantly when I go to Starbucks to use their internet I need to launch IE in order to get my iBook to recognize their network (I'm sure plenty of folks will now respond and tell me that is not necessary, there is some other way - and I'm sure there is - but thats what works for me)

Re:But I need IE!

[planetfinder]

This has been my experience also.
It seems that some sites can only be accessed with an IE browser that only
runs on Windows. Even the IE browser that does run on the Mac
cannot access these sites.
I'm encountering more of these MS only websites as
time goes by. Will this end when we can only access the
web using Windows or a hack of Windows software ?
If this continues the web will essentially come under the control
of Microsoft corporation. This should be of concern to everyone no matter what
operating system they use.

Re:But I need IE!

[xmorg]

I believe its more of a result of poor programming rather than an issue of web developers "switching to IE only".

So called web developers are pushed through cookie cutter classes at community coleges, using "(insert GUI we development tool here) design in 21 days" as a textbook, and getting hired by companies who dont know any better, and are designing sites with the only tool they know which happens to support only IE.

it may do little but complaining is the only thing we can do. I know that when I quit my DLS prvider and go back cable, I sill cite "IE needed to complete setup" as one of the reasons for leaving.

Re:But I need IE!

[planetfinder]

Maybe you are correct but its its hard to understand how poor programming
always results in websites that can only be accessed by a web browser
that only runs on Windows.

Re:But I need IE!

[anubi]

They use Microsoft development tools.

Much like Visual Basic requires a Windows system for support code.

Its a quandary many business executives will face - especially if there is a "paradigm shift" and Linux systems start becoming widespread.

Will a financial business which invested heavily in Microsoft systems be able to communicate with a wealthy investor who runs a Linux based system?

Using business skills taught in today's business schools, the executive needs to consider the needs of Microsoft versus the needs of his customers, and from that make the decision on whether or not his corporation will require vendor-specific technologies that their customers must comply to in order to be their customer.

As usual, there will be the big corporate entities who don't give a damm about what their customers need, leaving the paths paved in gold for the growing small-cap companies who are trying to meet the needs of the customer. This is the main reason I am extremely reluctant to invest in large-cap companies - as often large-cap companies have grown beyond serving the customer, and its all about obedience to the CEO.

When you are a multi-trillion dollar company, what difference would it make to you anyway if your customers can't do business with you? When the corporate website proudly proclaims that if you don't meet the latest release of vendor-specific software, they can't talk to you, they get more and more like an exclusive club... Trying to do business with them is flat more trouble than its worth. Its like trying to buy stock or mutual funds through a "full-service" broker. They won't do what you want - rather they insist you choose among only the things they will allow you. I have no place in my life for those kind of people.

There will be a Sam Walton that will gladly accept those business's unwanted customers.

The big corporate CEO can do the thing big corporate CEO's do best : showing downward sloping graphs in front of investors and claiming a "dissapointing return" in light of all the small-caps around them making impressive gains. What do big financial corporations need customers for anyway? At their level, its all about power, not service.

Its amazing to me just how inattentive large financial institutions are to their customers - seeing them drift away after discussions on things like website compatibility. Does the financial institution ever think those customers will come back once they get established somewhere else? Do they know any future mailings they issue will be thought of as "junk mail" and tossed in the can without even being opened? Any effort they make to phone you will be thought of as a highly unwelcome interruption? It is so *easy* to lose a customer... damn near impossible to *get* one.

Its what's making Sam Walton rich.

Re:But I need IE!

[planetfinder]

So it boils down to Microsoft is effectively
introducing proprietary standards onto the web
and we should all be concerned because it could
ultimately give them ownership of the web.

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[klancaster]

Of course things will work for a while...what I was referring to is the inevitable upgrade of the system to IE 6+ required.

Spoofing/Maquarading Firefox

[shking]

The third item in this query points to this excellent article

Correction.. Panther not Tiger..

[the_rajah]

I am an admitted Mac Noobie having had this venerable G3 Imac for a short time. I knew it was one of those cat names. It's actually OS-X 10.3.9 that I am using.

I thought it was time I got some exposure to OS-X after being a Windows and Linux user. This G-3 came from a Good Will store and set me back all of $30. Still playing and learning.

Sorry for the confusion.

Yeah, No Kidding

[Greyfox]

I recently discovered that CSS handling in IE is functionally retarded. Apparently a lot of people (particularly web developers) are aware of the problem. Microsoft for the most part insists that the worst bits of it are "features." No web 2.0 for you, IE users. If Microsoft would just discontinue the browser, we could move forward without wasting endless hours trying to come up with workaround's for the one thing Microsoft's always been good at putting out -- bugs!

Re:Yeah, No Kidding

[TheMoonRat]

Only RECENTLY? What rock have you been living under for the past 5+ years?

Re:Yeah, No Kidding

[Greyfox]

Um... IBM?

For the last 5 years I'd been doing UNIX C programming and haven't had to deal with the differences between web browsers or any related nastiness. Which is actually a pretty good gig if you can get it. Oh yeah, and I run Linux at home so naturally I don't run into problems there. I'm still mostly mucking about with UNIX in my development environment, but it's more web-centric work now so I'm having to pay attention to such issues. Up until now it appears that my team has dealt with the problem by making our UI very simple, but as we want to do increasingly complicated things, it's becoming more of an issue.

Fortunately the team is currently leaning toward just mandating Firefox since all of our applications are only used in-house and the vast majority of the developers use Firefox anyway. IE users will most likely be welcome to continue using the browser, it just won't be supported. Which essentially means that any problem you have from CSS not formatting correctly to your machine catching on fire and exploding will be met with the same "Try it with Firefox and call us back if the problem persists."

Sucks for Mac users

[tentimestwenty]

So many sites require IE to be returned as the browser ID. At least with the crappy version we had we could get into the sites. Now many of those sites will simply not be accessible. In the long run, maybe this will help open those sites up because of the growing need to develop for more than IE, but in the short term it's going to suck.

Re:Sucks for Mac users

[Em Adespoton]

That would be why all non-IE browsers have the ability to change the User Agent string... in Safari it's in the Debug menu, and in Firefox you enter about:config into the URL bar, hit enter, right click to add a new string, and enter general.useragent.override as the string name and whatever you want as the useragent (I prefer the string "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;) Gecko/20040910" which tends to give pretty good results).

Re:Mac users should be pissed to see IE go. Seriou

[Magic5Ball]

The handful of Windows newbies you speak of have had no access to pre-installed IE Mac since OS X 10.2, which was more than two years ago.

Comcast

[Tenacious Lee]

Great. Maybe now Comcast will come out with a way to register my modem that doesn't require MSIE on my Mac, which I don't have- or spending 30 minutes on the phone with their tech support telling me I need to reboot my computer to register an IP address after they link it to me.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[theCAS]

Do you realize that IE has 90% of the market share and hasn't even changed much in 3-4 years? Firefox puts out a brand new browser that is a lot faster with tons better features and only manages to garner 10%.

You got it backwards.
Do you realize that a free browser managed to erode in a significant way the market share of a bundled product backed by MS marketing juggernaut and and a terrifying percent of web sites built to work in it only? And that in a world where users are an exemple of complete ignorance and incompetence?

You forget that there are people who fix friends' and customers' pcs and that those people usually choose the better alternative.

agree GP is insightful

[Bob 4knee]

I never really thought about it this way before, but the GP makes sense. I'm a unix-user. I want a command line on my computer. I'm not a uber-geek or a hardcore unix systems programmer, just a user that wants a command line. I run linux (Fedora Core 3, no race to update, no coolness points for either the latest _or_ the greatest) on the PC provided by my work. My laptop is a powerbook, still one revision slow with 10.3.something (up to date, just not 10.4). I've got the command line, I'm happy.

If Apple hadn't based OS-X on Free BSD, I would still hate Macs and I'd be running some flavor of Linux on some intel/AMD laptop. Using the powerbook, I've discovered that there's lots of other neat (Apple) stuff there. We're going to need a new computer at home soon, and the cheapskate in me is thinking linux, but the geek in me is thinking Mac (command line for me, GUI just like at the elementary school and educational games available for the kids). If Mac wasn't available, I would have already bought a new Linux box.

YAY!

[versionthirteen]

Now if it would just deinstall itself as well.

Re:winners and losers

[scrod]

I am just not releasing any products with SSE inlined at this time....probably soon tho.

Well, if that's going to be a Mac product you'd better be prepared to write an altivec or at least scalar-code implementation of that algorithm for the PPC version. Just because Apple is switching microprocessors doesn't mean that your user base (assuming you do become a Mac developer) isn't going to be 70% PPC for the next 5 years.

Banks pay lousy? Ha,ha,ha!

[jotaeleemeese]

Good one buddy.

Good one.

I earn twice as much as elsewhere, and is not for lack of looking around.

I have been to too many interviews and at the end the paltry salary that other industries pay "force" me to jump from one bank to the next.

I have tried with ISPs, oil industry, newspapers, Software houses, service companies, outsourcing companies and they all have offered between 20% and 50% less for a job with similar specifications and responsibilities.

As for the fancy titles it is true, everybody and his dog has them, but in general VP means somebody with managerial responsibilities.

Re:Banks pay lousy? Ha,ha,ha!

[shaunbaker]

easy, i wasn't trying to be an ass, i know they pay is actually good. It a "saying", as in something for all the bankers to joke around about around the water cooler. There are lots of old sayings, doesn't mean they are true. It used to be that banks were like the federal service, didn't really matter how well you did, seniority was all that counted. Since post-deregulation, things are very different. In short, ease up, it's slashdot, no one implied that you were making a lot of money.

A VP is normally a middle manager.

[jotaeleemeese]

On the IT side of things such a person will have quite a bit of responsibility and will manage a team between 5 and 20 people depending on the situation.

Branches?

[jotaeleemeese]

I have been to a bank branch 3 times in the last 8 years.

I have accounts in the UK and Mexico.

The internet has changed life for anybody that wishes to take advantage of it.

Re:Demonstrates IE's market dominance

[theLOUDroom]

This is not true, because the vast majority of users do not know how to install a new browser on their PC. In fact, Firefox could even *give* people money to install - it still wouldn't help when users don't know HOW to install.

This doesn't make sense. For your point to be valid you have to make the argument that not only do they not know, they can't learn and for some magical reason aren't allowed to get someone else to do it for them. (Most people don't know how to put a tire on a rim, yet most cars have tires.)

FF is up to about 10% market share and has been holding steady.

I'd like to see a source for this as all the studies I see show that FF is still growing and IE is decreasing.

All the people who know how to install a new browser have done so.

This is a ridiculius claim because all I have to do to disprove it is find one guy who can install software yet uses IE. It so happens that I do know a guy like that, so your statement is false.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[Zontar The Mindless]

Interesting.

FWIW, I just do the plebian sort of online banking with WF that involves personal checquing and savings accounts and the occasional wire transfer. But I've had no problems doing so with Mozilla, Firefox or Opera on Linux or Windows, or with Konqueror. Don't have a Mac, so you'll have to ask someone else about that.

Not your father's Oldsmobile.

[argent]

IE in Windows and IE on the Mac are completely different environments.

The biggest problem with IE is not IE itself, but rather the fact that the SAME display, access, and access control code is used for the browser and the desktop. IE on the Mac has never had that "advantage", and a few years back IE was my preferred browser on the Mac even while I had IE for Windows banned at the office.

Re:winners and losers

[gnuLNX]

No it means that I will start supporting the newer Macs. As it stands now I don't support them.

Re:MS gets wise

[kiwipeso]

It won't really matter when office 12 comes out and has open file standards, ass then mac and linux programs could just support the standards and do a better job of the actual program.

'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
'No, women are greater than firefox. Women can't block popups for you. Naked women can have sex with you? Yes.'

iCab

[argent]

You shoudl be able to run iCab on OS 8/9.

Re:Spoofing + Bansk = Trouble

[idsofmarch]

How do you figure this? If the site renders properly, if SSL is still working, and this is the only way to make the site work, then what exactly is the problem?

As if it were compiled against Winelib

[tepples]

IE for UNIX systems was buggy because 1. it was IE and 2. it was just the Windows version recompiled against MainWin, a commercial reimplementation of Win32 that functions in much the same way as Winelib.

You prove my point

[tentimestwenty]

Doing any of those is far from the default behavior.

Re:winners and losers

[scrod]

Don't you want your application to be at least mildly popular? Implementing cross-platform vectorized code is pretty easy--if I were an Apple engineer I would tell you to use the Accelerate framework in Mac OS X (formerly vecLib) and be done with it. Honestly, you're in for a big disappointment if you want to develop for Macs while restricting your application to only the very earliest adopters of an already marginalized platform simply because you have a couple of SSE2-only implementations of something that's probably already available in libraries distributed with your target OS. I've ported a 26,000 line PPC Mac OS X application to run natively on an Intel Mac by changing less than ten lines of code, and the project already had Altivec optimizations to boot. Once you actually start using the Mac OS X APIs you'll see how easy it is. Jobs wasn't joking when he said you just have to check one box in Xcode. Forget QT. The Mac really is that consistent.

Re:winners and losers

[gnuLNX]

That is interesting indeed. However the issue still remains that I can't justify buying two Mac's. As it stands I don't support them at all. Ulitmately my primary users will be Windows and Linux any way. I am just looking forward to developing on the Mac. If however the majority of my users ran Macs I would certainly support as both old and new.

Just glad i still have a copy of it

[rollthelosindice]

Because unforetunately, Anyone that uses Authorize.net and their virtual terminal service must use IE if you want to do any credit card refunds. Why? Because there is javascript that dynamically changes the web form when you check a radio button and change from capture a charge to refund a charge. why doesn't it work in Safari or Firefox? I don't know, but it doesn't. When it works, I will never use IE again. Until then, it has to stay.

Re:winners and losers

[scrod]

What makes you think you need two Macs? Surely you're familiar with cross-compilation--and you've heard of Rosetta, right? That's all you need. It's a trivial process to make sure that an app runs on PPC Macs if you've already got an x86 one. Check a box and double-click.

Re:winners and losers

[gnuLNX]

Actually I am not familiar...I have spent a total of perhaps 1.5 hours developing on a Mac. What you are saying totally rocks and adds support to my wanting to get a Mac to develop on!!!

Thanks for the cool links and the info!

Cheers.

in other news

[dvhh]

End of life cycle will be reached for
windows NT4
windows 2000
as they will be no longer provided in the msdn CDs.

and for my 2cents
IE helped much to clean the pluging nightmare that we (almost ?) all know from netscape 4, as the plugin market is a little more stable (java/flash).
Dropping IE support for mac is neither a good or a bad thing for mac users, because mostly the adverage user don't care at all as long as they can check their webmmail,search on google, you name it ...

but seeing the reaction of most mac users here, we can extrapolate on Office (already done), and for adobe products, as apple does more and more to intefere with adobe lineup and adobe see their revenue from the mac platform decline and the costs getting higher ( transition on OSX x86 don't come cheap for most compagny ).
And mac user do care about the blue scrollbar :) (after all OSX is elegant and sleek)

BBC report has an entertaining flaw

[CoolBru]

The BBC says "The current version of IE for Macs is effectively three years old, making it an outdated browser compared to its Windows equivalent.".

Um, IE6 was last updated (other than security patches) in August 2001, making it 4.5 years old. Curious assumption that the Windows version was more recent - just shows that MS are far better at marketing than software.

Re: This highlights the actual problem, which is..

[fyngyrz]

I have a Mac and some WF accounts. WF definitely works in Firefox, Safari, and Omniweb. I presume it works in IE5, but as I've never started the program, nor do I intend to, I can't tell you. :)

Re:Interesting Problems

[richpulp]

Apple has three varieties of Mac Mini at $499, $599 and $699. The top end has a superdrive and 512mb ram. There is NO mic, no monitor, no keyboard and no mouse. Buying the absolute minimum of keyboard, mouse and a display (not Apple - an Apple display will cost at least $900 last time I looked) is going to add another $350. I am still trying to figure out why for a first purchase the Mac Mini makes sense?