Zeldman waxes poetic about the end of development of Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac. With this news, spreading around the net today, we learned that pretty much all stand-alone development of IE has stopped (future Windows versions will be integrated into the OS).
On one hand, the news doesn't bother me much. I've long since switched to a combination of Safari and Camino for my day to day browsing. The IE5/Mac icon doesn't even have a place on my dock anymore. It was a great browser in its day, but the aforementioned programs have passed it by.
On the other hand, I know that most people aren't going to seek out weird browsers like Safari, Camino, Firebird, or even Netscape 6. Heck, its hard enough getting some people to switch from the Netscape 4 that comes pre-installed with the computer. So, the dominate Mac browser--and web development runtime environment--will stagnate. This isn't really good news for those of us who build, and use, the web on Macs.
Posted by Karl
June 13, 2003 03:11 PM