The death of a pioneer
Microsoft has now officially killed the Mac version of Internet Explorer. I could see this coming since there have been no updates other than security fixes and such for a couple of years. The browser was one of, if not the, first to feature decent support for W3C standards such as CSS and DOM when it was released back in 2000, and for a while it was my main browser. Then Mozilla got up to speed and stability. These days I hardly use IE at all. When my bank finally opened their online services for modern browsers the only reason I ever launch IE is to check how my work looks in it. IE, both Mac and Windows versions, has fallen way behind in the race for standards support, and the support it does have, though pretty good, has enough bugs for me to start pulling my hair every time I’m forced to launch it. So, I will not miss this browser. Hopefully it will be a little bit easier to switch Mac users to Mozilla or Netscape 7 for OS 9 and Safari, Firebird, Mozilla or OmniWeb for OS X.
Of course, others have noticed this piece of news too:
- Zeldman: R.I.P.
- Eric Meyer: Hail and Farewell
- Doug Bowman: IE/Mac, Rest in Peace
- Tantek: End of development for Mac Internet Explorer
- Todd Dominey: The Disturbing Trend in Browsers
- Simon Willison: The reason monopolies are a bad idea
- MozillaZine: Microsoft Cancels Development of Internet Explorer for Mac
- Linuxart: Internet Explorer for the Mac is pretty much dead too
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