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typoon · Dec 10, 2003, 01:25 PM

Is anyone using MSN for Mac? I was curious as to whether you could just use the browser without using the service. Maybe this is the updated version of IE we have been waiting for. Anyway, It's still safari for me. I was just curious that's all.

zachs · Dec 10, 2003, 02:42 PM

I believe that you have to subscribe to MSN in order to use it (unlike on Windows, where you don't). That's why not many people have really used it.

clarkgoble · Dec 10, 2003, 04:19 PM

I have it. I got talked into using Qwest DSL and it (unfortunately) came with MSN. I say unfortunately as I'm not trapped into a year contract and they didn't give me a fixed ip like they promised. Every time the DSL modem gets unplugged or turned off the ip# gets reset. Further the DSL modem they provided has a built in unmodifiable firewall and appears to screw around with NAT.

Anyway, I played around with MSN. It is better than IE5, but has buttons that are too big and it is definitely an AOL "let's be far too helpful" type of program. (Although unlike AOL it actually looks good) I rarely boot it up since I use Safari and Mail for everything.

Millennium · Dec 10, 2003, 06:01 PM

Originally posted by typoon:
Maybe this is the updated version of IE we have been waiting for.

Unfortunately, it is.

I say "unfortunately" because its standards support absolutely kicks the snot out of anything else out there, even Gecko (MSN/Mac even supports the holy grail of CSS, the :nth-child() pseudoclass and its relatives; no one else does that one yet). But because they lock you into MSN before you can even use it, nobody (myself included) can test on it, and the other browser makers don't take it seriously enough to get off their collective rears and catch up. I don't normally use it either, because I neither have nor want MSN access.

dole · Dec 10, 2003, 11:06 PM

I get free MSN with my Verizon account. The browser it comes with is much better than the standalone IE. I mainly just use it to check my hotmail account so I have tested it extensively with many websites to see how it renders them.

clarkgoble · Dec 11, 2003, 11:56 AM

One big annoyance is that you can't drag and drop web pages from Safari onto MSN to open them in MSN. Also while it is much better than IE5 for Mac it is also more standards compliant than IE5 for Windows. But this means that it doesn't have the bugs IE5 for Windows has. That means all the idiots who wrote crappy CSS2 that displayed right on IE5 for Win but nowhere else will also not display properly in MSN. So if you think it will provide "better compatibility" with IE5 for Win you will be disappointed.

I tried out all the sites I could find that didn't display right on non-IE5 XP and not one displayed any better on MSN.

chabig · Dec 11, 2003, 01:16 PM

So if the new IE is better than the old IE, can we just download the MSN software and strip out the browser?

Chris

clarkgoble · Dec 11, 2003, 03:06 PM

Nope. It's all integrated.

chabig · Dec 11, 2003, 03:23 PM

Thanks. I wondered. Is it in the Messenger app?

Chris