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The news that Microsoft will no longer develop Internet Explorer for the Macintosh is something that should significantly affect me. IE is my browser of choice. Apple’s Safari is still too much of a beta product for it to be my primary browser. My interest in web design also dictates that I know what browsers to design for. There are also implications that the Mac may be undermined as a viable business platform.

I am, however, not too worried about this news. Safari is coming along nicely. Apple should have a great browser by its full number release. As a web designer, this means I have one less browser to worry about (eventually - as in Netscape 2.74). And Apple has positioned itself in such a way that it is covered in the very event something like this happens. In fact, this very move probably accelerated this inevitable news.

I checked my blog page in Internet Explorer on a PC the other day and to my horror, none of the images were appearing! Even the CSS specifications weren’t showing. I checked my page in Netscape and everything was fine. All the Mac browsers render my page just fine. Apparently, IE for the PC doesn’t resolve server-rooted paths so I changed everything to relative paths. That solved the problem. So everything should appear ok now. I’m just horrified that my page had looked funky for so long to IE PC users, who unfortunately comprise the majority of internet users. Yikes.

…until I find out Apple’s web browser is not supported under KidsGoGoGo, the only web filtering software currently available for OS X. So I had to uninstall Safari. I’ll have to wait until Intego releases the OS X version of Content Barrier on January 27 in order to enjoy the benefits of Safari again. The new Content Barrier is a much better product than KidsGoGoGo - it blocks all objectionable material in all browsers and it even blocks unsavory newsgroup content.

Although I like Safari, it did crash on me once. I clicked on a link to my cousin Tina’s site and Safari crashed hard. Maybe it didn’t like Tripod’s pop-up ads or maybe it couldn’t handle the six year old site’s Microsoft Publisher 97-generated html (yikes!). Tina, time to update your site! =)