Microsoft removes Netscape support from IE; plug-in needs re-writing.

Derek Hadlington djh at mac.com
Wed Jul 25 22:27:30 UTC 2001


on 25/7/01 9:59 pm, John M McIntosh at johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com
wrote:

>> Noel,
>> 
>> Thanks for the info. I had a tiny little bit of hope that this may just be a
>> beta thing. But I'm not surprised.
>> 
>> - Andreas
> I'd be curious to know how this will impact the macintosh plugin, anyone know

  Very interesting question.

  The IE source code for the Mac Edition is supposed to be radically
different at all levels from the Windows versions (Even in areas where the
code could be platform independent. It is reported to be a cleaner,better
written code base as they started again essentially for the 5.0 Mac
version).

  It would be even more of a deliberate task to remove the NS plugin support
and Ive seen no mention of .Net Support for the 5.1 Final release of IE on
OSX. I also seem to remember reading something about MS not Intending to
implement the full .Net  architecture on the Mac.

  So I would expect it will have no Impact on us short term but FY 2002 may
be another story. The infamous five year deal between Apple and Microsoft to
end their tangle of litigation cases finishes ( The one where MS bought $150
Million dollars of Apple stock in 1997 and agreed to produce Current Mac
versions of Office etc for 5 years). At that point anything could happen !

Dropping the classic NS plugin API on Windows could be a great way for MS to
squeeze the Mac and Netscape camps even further. I suspect Plugin writers
are going to have enough of a job rewriting all their plugins to use the new
MS way of things without having to have a second code base for the NS
plugins for what many will see as a very small market segment. So many will
just drop the NS API and go solely with the 90%+ Windows/IE people.

Just my $0.02+ Worth :-))))

Derek
 



  





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