Microsoft tells Mac users to get Firefox
TWO AND A HALF years ago Microsoft discontinued its Internet Explorer for Mac and the firm recommended users migrate to Apple's Safari. Today, the MSN video page tells Mac users to use Firefox.
Microsoft killed its proprietary IE engine for Mac OS X and removed it from the firms' download pages in early 2006, suggesting at the time that "Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari." While testing the Flash plug-in for Linux and the very nice Preferences Toolbar we decided to switch to the IE 5.0 for Macintosh user-agent on Microsoft's MSN Video web page.
The result was a warning page telling that our browser and OS combination was unsupported - as a result of the browser user-agent sniffing by Microsoft's servers - but what really caught our attention was the recommended browsers: IE 6 or 7 - predictably- but Firefox 2.0 as the second option, both on Windows and on Mac OS X.
The message, verbatim, reads: "We recommend the following browsers: Internet
Explorer 6 or 7 and FireFox 2.x on Windows XP SP2, Internet Explorer 7 and
FireFox 2.x on Windows Vista, FireFox 2.x on Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger".
So, we guess that Microsoft is still not aware of the Firefox 3.0 release, yet. Besides highlighting the pitfalls of recommending a given version number instead of just "the latest version of..." in an error page - specially considering the fast-moving world of web related software - it's good to know that Microsoft is not even recommending Safari for Mac OS-X users.
Or perhaps they do like plenty of web designers and just test its site with the two most common browser engines, IE and Mozilla?. INQuiring minds want to know. µ
L'INQs
Apple
forced Safari to customers via Quicktime software updater
Firefox
developer uncovers "hidden" speed boost for Safari in OS X
Safari
for Windows 'Tripled market share' is relative
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Of course they know about the release. They sent them a cake!
Who gives a wii about what browser Microsoft is recommending the retarded 5% of computer users are struggling to load their boring ass self important hippie blogs on ?
Epic fail, and a great example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand's doing. Not only did the IE Dev team send a cake to Mozilla celebrating the release of Firefox 3, the MSN Video guys can't even seem to figure out how to spell Firefox right (I mean, c'mon, call me pedantic, but it's Firefox, not FireFox). Yet another reason to point and laugh at MSN. Not like we need another reason. --- Mr. DOS
[[So, we guess that Microsoft is still not aware of the Firefox 3.0 release, yet.]] Well, that would explain why IE never catches up to Firefox! MS is still trying to compete with FF 2.x!
It is normal for companies to mention a specific version of a software to be compatible. If the testing department responsible for the site has tested on that particular version of the software thoroughly, they will write that version. Remember, a different version means they have to test that thoroughly on that version - an internal project: Ensuring compatibility for version such and such - without that they will not say "use that version" on the website. Take another example. Java is write once, run anywhere, right? Wrong. I personally work on java, and it will be very stupid of me to tell my customer, "ohh just use the latest version" Same Applet for example behave different on different JRE versions, and for same JRE version, behaves differently between IE and Firefox. Funny, but thats the way it is :(