Microsoft kills IE5 Mac
Microsoft has announced it is to stop developing Internet Explorer for Mac. You kinda thought this was in the pipeline since they announced that they were no longer developing IE6 Win, though the reasons given make interesting reading. In the press release, they cite the success of Safari and the inaccessibility of Apple’s underlying source code as the main factors in their decision.
These comments can only be seen as an excuse. Safari is certainly doing well on Jaguar, but I would wager that IE is still the dominant web browser on OS X. As for Apple’s inaccessible code, is OS X not built upon open source standards made widely available to third party developers?
However Microsoft decided on the fate of IE5 Mac, it’s demise is significant for a number of reasons.
As a web developer, it’s bad news that a major browser such as IE5 Mac will no longer be upgraded to feature new or upcoming web technologies. An example of this scenario is caused by the inability of IE6 Win to correctly display PNG images. Such is the widespread use of IE6 Win that developers can’t enjoy the benefits of the technology.
And finally, it has to be said, before Safari and Camino came up to speed, IE 5 Mac was by far the best browser on the Mac for several years. In honour of this, Eric Meyer has compiled a list of the innovations IE5 Mac introduced {via zeldman}.
Posted 5 years, 5 months ago on 16th June 2003.
As a Mac user I can say this comes as good news for us. Safari has come a long way, and is a pleasure to use. While it may be far from complete compaired to IE6 on Microsofts Windows, its still a very good browser. The next release with OS X tiger should add even more to the already outstanding product Safari is.
Paul Rezendes · 4 years, 3 months ago