Death of an Icon – Internet Explorer Macintosh

You've probably read it by now. Internet Explorer for Macintosh is now officially dead — or will be in three days. There will be no further security or performance updates from Microsoft. I realize with the inattention it's received over the past few years, it's a welcome development for most of us. But in its day, it was da bomb! In fact, I would be bold enough to say that in its day, it was the most advanced browser (thanks to Tantek Celic and his team). It was ahead of the curve. It rocked. IE Mac boasted "the first browser ever to fully support CSS-1, HTML 4.0, PNG 1.0, DOM 1.0 HTML, ECMAScript-262, parts of CSS-2, and most of DOM 1.0 Core & some DOM 2.0."

But with the announcement of no further development, it fell more and more behind until, it is now loved only slightly more than Netscape 4. It has been sad to watch it die. But at this point, I'm happy to have the wake, reminisce for a bit, and move on. Microsoft is suggesting Mac users migrate to a more recent web browser — like Safari (isn't it shocking they didn't mention Firefox? )

If you need to support IE Mac, and thus check pages in it, make sure you've got a working copy. As of January 31st of 2006, it won't even be available as a download from Mactopia. For now, OS X users (IE 5.2.3) and OS 8 & 9 users (IE 5.1.7) can download their respective copies at the links provided.

And yes, it's certainly a thorn now — but I do "remember when" …