Tasman is a discontinued

browser engine A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interacti ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for inclusion in the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5. Tasman was an attempt to improve support for web standards, as defined by the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

. At the time of its release, Tasman was seen as the layout engine with the best support for web standards such as

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

and CSS. Internet Explorer for Mac is no longer supported, but newer versions of Tasman were incorporated in some other Microsoft products. In 2003, Microsoft stopped development for Internet Explorer for Mac. In 2005, they discontinued support for the browser and in 2006 removed the application from the available Microsoft downloads site.

Tantek Çelik Tantek Çelik is a Turkish-American computer scientist, currently the Web standards lead at Mozilla Corporation. Çelik was previously the chief technologist at Technorati. He worked on microformats and is one of the principal editors of seve ...

led the software team that developed the Tasman engine. Tasman later became used as the layout engine for the

MSN for Mac OS X MSN is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps provided by Microsoft. The main webpage provides news, weather, sports, finance and other content curated from hundreds of different sources that Microsoft has partnere ...

and Office 2004 for Mac.

Version history

The first version of Tasman (referred to as "v0") was released with ''Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition'' on March 27, 2000. An upgraded version (version 0.1) followed on with the release of ''Internet Explorer 5.1 for Mac''. On May 15, 2003, Microsoft released the subscription-only

browser, which used an upgraded version of Tasman (version 0.9) as its layout engine. In a posting to the ''Mac Internet Explorer Talk'' list, Internet Explorer for Mac program manager Jimmy Grewal listed improvements: * Full

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

support * Improved CSS support, with CSS 3 Selectors, CSS TV Profile and @media * Improved DOM support with DOM 1 Core and DOM 2 Core, Style, and Events. Also improved compatibility with Windows IE DOM. *

XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, pr ...

1.0 and 1.1 support, although it is not activated in MSN for Mac OS X. * Better support for Mac OS X features such as CoreGraphics, ATSUI and CFSocket networking. For a while Tasman was improved as part of a number of TV set-top box projects at Microsoft reaching version 1.0. The Tasman engine is now used in the Microsoft TV

Mediaroom Mediaroom is a collection of software for operators to deliver Internet Protocol television, IPTV (IPTV) subscription services, including content-protected, live, digital video recorder, video on demand, multiscreen, and applications. These servi ...

Edition. On May 11, 2004, Microsoft started shipping Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac which incorporates a version of the Tasman layout engine in its email client

Entourage An entourage () is an informal group or band of people who are closely associated with a (usually) famous, notorious, or otherwise notable individual. The word can also refer to: Arts and entertainment * L'entourage, French hip hop / rap collecti ...

. Since

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for macOS. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and is comparable to Office 2010 for Windows. Office 2011 was followed by Microsoft Office 201 ...

, Entourage has been replaced by the Macintosh version of

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Primarily popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as Calendari ...

which uses a

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon K ...

-based layout engine (used by

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

) instead.

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft and based on the Chromium (web browser), Chromium open-source project, superseding Edge Legacy. In Windows 11, Edge ...

, the successor to Internet Explorer, uses the

Blink Blinking is a bodily function; it is a semi-autonomic rapid closing of the eyelid. A single blink is determined by the forceful closing of the eyelid or inactivation of the levator palpebrae superioris and the activation of the palpebral por ...

engine on

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

References

External links

''Web Standards Project praises Microsoft decision to focus on standards in Mac Internet Explorer 5.0''
{{Internet Explorer Browser engines Classic Mac OS software MacOS web browsers Internet Explorer 2000 software

Version history

See also

References

External links