Internet explorer for apple mac for mac os#
Internet explorer for apple mac for mac#
Internet explorer for apple mac mac os#
Internet explorer for apple mac software#
Internet explorer for apple mac code#

Nykris came up with a range of fascinating design sketches, but the sketches that followed the original idea of coordinating with the flavors of the new Apple hardware look, worked the best, and so we followed that path.

Internet explorer for apple mac code#

So somehow the Mac IE5 exec, Dick Craddock, let me, a newly hired engineer, hire a London design agency and I ended up art-directing on our side while also writing the new UI code to make it happen. Nykris was a digital design company founded by two artists IвЂ™d previously worked with at MMC, Nikki Barton and Chris Prior (their first names combined to make the company name) and they had other great people on staff who I trusted, like Graham Bartram. We had no graphic artists in our little office in San Jose and I suggested we hire a company called Nykris back in London. I put my idea to the rest of the Mac IE team, and they loved it. By being more vivid we would paradoxically blend into the background, and look more at home. That way our вЂњframeвЂќ around the web page would match the bezel and so would be seen as part of the background and be distinct from the content. If your MacвЂ™s bezel was Bondi blue, weвЂ™d make our UI Bondi blue. I had the idea of making our browser chrome match the actual hardware you were on.

We were building a state-of-the-art new HTML engine for IE 5 (Tasman) and I wanted the chrome to be as modern.

Internet explorer for apple mac mac os#

AppleвЂ™s demos at the time of their future OS would (which came to be Mac OS X) also used this same gray look. Eventually the whole Mac range had this same vivid design style, and the gray drab interface of MacOS 8, which we matched, seemed left behind. Meanwhile, Mac hardware of the 1998-1999 era was incredibly vivid, with first the Bondi blue iMac and then a whole palette of iMacs in translucent candy colors with white pinstriped elements. Everything was the MacOS platinum style, shades of gray like cement, with a horde of tiny 16 by 16 pixel toolbar icons (in 4-bit color with a 1 bit mask) most of which had obviously been designed by engineers in a pixel editor like ResEdit.

Internet explorer for apple mac for mac#

MMC started off using tools like HyperCard supplemented by our custom plug-ins, but by the mid-90s we had switched to native code and never looked back.Д¬oming from the artist-influenced multimedia world, the visual style Microsoft had in progress for Mac IE 5 looked ancient to me. IвЂ™d do a rough prototype, they would do a beautiful image of how it really ought to look, and after a bit of back and forth weвЂ™d have a lovely product. I was used to working with graphic designers.

Internet explorer for apple mac software#

I should explain that my background was at a BBC spinoff called вЂњMMCвЂќ, coding Mac multimedia software for CD-ROMs like вЂњ3D AtlasвЂќ and Douglas AdamsвЂ™ вЂњLast Chance to SeeвЂќ. I was supposed to go work for Apple in Cupertino, but the Apple recruiter screwed up my offer paperwork, and Microsoft snapped me up. In the summer of 1998 I moved from London to San Jose, California to write code for Mac IE 5 at Microsoft. New Look : How I set the look of Mac IE 5, possibly kickstarted Aqua (sorry), and invented translucent blurred windows, in the 1990s.

This history has been compiled by Maf Vosburgh, the developer who conceived and executed the implementation of this major UI redesign: I also want to share a detailed history of MacIE 5вЂ™s bold UI design, dubbed вЂњNew LookвЂќ internally. Here are some anecdotes and thoughts from an insiderвЂ™s perspective. This was both the most important release of Internet Explorer for the Mac, and the last release. IвЂ™ve just posted a Twitter thread that goes into some details bout the events leading up to and just after the unveiling of MacIE 5 by Steve Jobs:ДЎ/ Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of MicrosoftвЂ™s Internet Explorer 5 for Mac. Rather I want to focus on the inside story of how and why it was developed, and some of the people and personalities that shaped itвЂ™s success and eventual demise. I donвЂ™t want to delve into the details of what made MacIE 5 special because my friend Tantek Г‡elik has already documented that on his blog. I was 22 years old and I was thrown into the deep end of the browser wars, the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and the love/hate relationship between Microsoft and Apple. This anniversary is also significant for me as MacIE 5 was first product I worked on when I started working at Microsoft in summer of 1999.

Internet explorer for apple mac for mac os#

It was also the first large third-party Mac application to ship for Mac OS X, and the first mainstream web browser to embrace standards compliant web content. This was both the most important release of Internet Explorer for the Mac and the last. Today (Jan 5th, 2020) marks the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of MicrosoftвЂ™s Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition (MacIE 5).