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Once upon a time, IE was the best browser available on Mac -- mostly due to being actually quite good. If that quality would return, I can see some people switc

by mhd 12y ago

Once upon a time, IE was the best browser available on Mac -- mostly due to being actually quite good. If that quality would return, I can see some people switching. Maybe not the "rockstar Ruby/Go developers", but a lot of the people who just need their $1k facebook machines. As for Linux, well, I don't think you'll go far there with proprietary programs. But let's assume a .NET like open source initiative. I'd give IE the application a pretty small market share then, but see no problem at all with programs using the rendering engine, i.e. a common "libIE" dependency. (And, of course, if it actually is the same engine as on Windows, testing alone would guarantee a lot of installations)

seanp2k2 12y ago
.net cross-platform is called Mono: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/supported-platforms/osx/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/supported-platfo...
robin_reala 12y ago
IE on Mac was a completely different beast to IE on Windows; it had separate rendering[1] and Javascript engines. There was an IE for Unix[2] which shared the Trident engine, but it never got significant traction. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_%28layout_engine%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_%28layout_engine%29 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX
dasil003 12y ago
There was a brief moment in time where IE 5 for Mac had the best CSS support of any browser on any platform (IE on Windows was a completely different engine). However part of being on the bleeding edge was that when development stagnated it had the weirdest bugs that we had to deal with for years.
exprL 12y ago
>mostly due to being actually quite good While I wouldn't generally praise (any of) the browsers of that time, Macs really didn't have much competition at that time when it came to web browsers.
tripzilch 12y ago
> Once upon a time, IE was the best browser available on Mac -- mostly due to being actually quite good. Huh, really. When was this then? I remember from during my veteran days of the browser wars (2005-2008 or so), IE for Mac was the only browser that PPK (of the Quirksmode.org compatibility tables) actually outright dismissed and at some point stopped testing for. If I remember correctly, his words were "bug-ridden crash-prone piece of trash".

by mhd 12y ago

seanp2k2 12y ago

.net cross-platform is called Mono: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/supported-platforms/osx/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/supported-platfo...

robin_reala 12y ago

IE on Mac was a completely different beast to IE on Windows; it had separate rendering[1] and Javascript engines. There was an IE for Unix[2] which shared the Trident engine, but it never got significant traction. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_%28layout_engine%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_%28layout_engine%29 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

dasil003 12y ago

There was a brief moment in time where IE 5 for Mac had the best CSS support of any browser on any platform (IE on Windows was a completely different engine). However part of being on the bleeding edge was that when development stagnated it had the weirdest bugs that we had to deal with for years.

exprL 12y ago

>mostly due to being actually quite good While I wouldn't generally praise (any of) the browsers of that time, Macs really didn't have much competition at that time when it came to web browsers.

tripzilch 12y ago

> Once upon a time, IE was the best browser available on Mac -- mostly due to being actually quite good. Huh, really. When was this then? I remember from during my veteran days of the browser wars (2005-2008 or so), IE for Mac was the only browser that PPK (of the Quirksmode.org compatibility tables) actually outright dismissed and at some point stopped testing for. If I remember correctly, his words were "bug-ridden crash-prone piece of trash".