5 ms·

I think that tying IE to operating system is a bad decision. If they can make whole MS Office package available on OSX, then why is browser that special ? Of co

by jan_g 16y ago

I think that tying IE to operating system is a bad decision. If they can make whole MS Office package available on OSX, then why is browser that special ? Of course I know many of the reasons why _not_ port IE to other oper. systems, but it would make my life easier if I could have all browsers on my machine for development testing.

gmac 16y ago
If they can make whole MS Office package available on OSX... Unfortunately that remains a big if: in reality, they can't, or choose not to. Office for Mac lacks major features (VBScript/macros being the biggest) and, in my experience, is even crashier than the Windows version.
- jan_g 16y ago
  Yes, you are correct. But the newest version, Office 2010, is much better and also supports VBA. My coworker that uses the beta version is positively surprised at the quality of the product. EDIT: It's actually named 'Microsoft Office for Mac 2011' and not 2010 and will be released at the end of October.
cubicle67 16y ago
I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, but from what I can see Office for Mac isn't simply a port but a completely separate codebase developed in parallel (for low values of parallel) It (Mac Office) also generates a significant amount of income for MS
- jan_g 16y ago
  No, I didn't know that, because it's completely counter-intuitive approach to creating software. You have to abstract most of the stuff and then port just OS-specific stuff. It's beyond me why a company of the great software development tradition like Microsoft would go and maintain two completely separate codebases.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    Because then Office would end up like iTunes for Windows. Office for Mac is actually really, really nice. I'm sure they have a lot of shared common libraries between the two, but it isn't a quick and dirty port. They take what they can use, but make sure that the end result is tuned for the OS.
    - mdwrigh2 16y ago
      Not to derail the topic from the main issue at hand, but what's so wrong with iTunes on Windows? While it doesn't conform to all of the Windows idioms you'd expect, I still found it to be a better music player than just about everything else. This was a couple years ago, back when I was using Windows, however.
      - jasonlotito 16y ago
        First, there is the issue of those Windows idioms that you expect on Windows. iTunes and Safari both essentially forgo any pretense of adopting Windows standards and instead keep their own way of doing things. It would be as if Office for Mac didn't use the menu bar on Apple, and instead, simply copied what they did on Windows. It also doesn't work well with the OS. Things you can quickly and easily do in WMP are painful in iTunes. I'm sure some people found iTunes a pleasant experience, but most people I know only have it installed because they have an iPod or an iPhone, and are forced to use it. Basically, it works well enough, but it's not a polished application.
        calloc 16y ago
        Office for the Mac doesn't follow standard Mac OS X idioms either ... for example using its own spell check rather than the system wide one. Printing goes through their own dialog which can cause all kinds of issues. Excel's scrolling is not the same as scrolling in the rest of OS X (they followed the scrolling from Excel on Windows which is horrible). The worst part is that I like to have various apps open in my dock, then when I click on them or switch to them with Alt + Tab I DON'T want them to open a new empty document that covers the entire screen thereby disrupting my thought process, and even if it did that when I open an existing document it should close the temporary empty document it just created (see TextEdit for a good example of that). In Excel for example the only way to get the function toolbar to show up is to click the "Formula Builder" in the "Toolbox". As soon as I click away from it to format the text a certain colour the bar disappears. When I am within a Cell in Excel, I can't use any of the Cmd + key shortcuts to accomplish anything, for example, selecting the entire contents of said cell. Going back to the text editing part, I can't easily look up a word in the built-in dictionary with ctrl + cmd + d while hovering over a word. Office for the Mac stands out like a sore thumb.
qjz 16y ago
I'll give you an upvote for your logic, but I'm also a web developer and know that porting IE to other platforms would only complicate my life, adding additional browser/platform permutations that I would have to test. Porting IE 9 to the Mac isn't going to spare me from running a VM to see how sites look and function on Windows.

by jan_g 16y ago

gmac 16y ago

If they can make whole MS Office package available on OSX... Unfortunately that remains a big if: in reality, they can't, or choose not to. Office for Mac lacks major features (VBScript/macros being the biggest) and, in my experience, is even crashier than the Windows version.

jan_g 16y ago
Yes, you are correct. But the newest version, Office 2010, is much better and also supports VBA. My coworker that uses the beta version is positively surprised at the quality of the product. EDIT: It's actually named 'Microsoft Office for Mac 2011' and not 2010 and will be released at the end of October.

cubicle67 16y ago

I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, but from what I can see Office for Mac isn't simply a port but a completely separate codebase developed in parallel (for low values of parallel) It (Mac Office) also generates a significant amount of income for MS

jan_g 16y ago
No, I didn't know that, because it's completely counter-intuitive approach to creating software. You have to abstract most of the stuff and then port just OS-specific stuff. It's beyond me why a company of the great software development tradition like Microsoft would go and maintain two completely separate codebases.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Because then Office would end up like iTunes for Windows. Office for Mac is actually really, really nice. I'm sure they have a lot of shared common libraries between the two, but it isn't a quick and dirty port. They take what they can use, but make sure that the end result is tuned for the OS.
  - mdwrigh2 16y ago
    Not to derail the topic from the main issue at hand, but what's so wrong with iTunes on Windows? While it doesn't conform to all of the Windows idioms you'd expect, I still found it to be a better music player than just about everything else. This was a couple years ago, back when I was using Windows, however.
    - jasonlotito 16y ago
      First, there is the issue of those Windows idioms that you expect on Windows. iTunes and Safari both essentially forgo any pretense of adopting Windows standards and instead keep their own way of doing things. It would be as if Office for Mac didn't use the menu bar on Apple, and instead, simply copied what they did on Windows. It also doesn't work well with the OS. Things you can quickly and easily do in WMP are painful in iTunes. I'm sure some people found iTunes a pleasant experience, but most people I know only have it installed because they have an iPod or an iPhone, and are forced to use it. Basically, it works well enough, but it's not a polished application.
      - calloc 16y ago
        Office for the Mac doesn't follow standard Mac OS X idioms either ... for example using its own spell check rather than the system wide one. Printing goes through their own dialog which can cause all kinds of issues. Excel's scrolling is not the same as scrolling in the rest of OS X (they followed the scrolling from Excel on Windows which is horrible). The worst part is that I like to have various apps open in my dock, then when I click on them or switch to them with Alt + Tab I DON'T want them to open a new empty document that covers the entire screen thereby disrupting my thought process, and even if it did that when I open an existing document it should close the temporary empty document it just created (see TextEdit for a good example of that). In Excel for example the only way to get the function toolbar to show up is to click the "Formula Builder" in the "Toolbox". As soon as I click away from it to format the text a certain colour the bar disappears. When I am within a Cell in Excel, I can't use any of the Cmd + key shortcuts to accomplish anything, for example, selecting the entire contents of said cell. Going back to the text editing part, I can't easily look up a word in the built-in dictionary with ctrl + cmd + d while hovering over a word. Office for the Mac stands out like a sore thumb.

qjz 16y ago

I'll give you an upvote for your logic, but I'm also a web developer and know that porting IE to other platforms would only complicate my life, adding additional browser/platform permutations that I would have to test. Porting IE 9 to the Mac isn't going to spare me from running a VM to see how sites look and function on Windows.