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 technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

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 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working ...

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

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

and CSS. Internet Explorer for Mac is no longer supported, but newer versions of Tasman are incorporated in some other Microsoft products. Tantek Çelik 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 Dial-up is an Internet service provider operated by Microsoft in the United States and formerly also in several other countries. Originally named The Microsoft Network, it debuted as a proprietary online service on August 24, 1995, to coinci ...

and

Office 2004 for Mac Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is a version of Microsoft Office developed for Mac OS X. It is equivalent to Office 2003 for Windows. The software was originally written for PowerPC Macs, so Macs with Intel CPUs must run the program under Mac OS X ...

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, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

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. It mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, prior ...

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 The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text introduced in Mac OS 8.5 and carried forward into Mac OS X. It replaced the WorldScript engine for legacy encodings. Obsolescence ...

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 is a collection of software for operators to deliver IPTV (IPTV) subscription services, including content-protected, live, digital video recorder, video on demand, multiscreen, and applications. These services can be delivered via a rang ...

Mediaroom Edition. On May 11, 2004, Microsoft started shipping

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is a version of Microsoft Office developed for Mac OS X. It is equivalent to Office 2003 for Windows. The software was originally written for PowerPC Macs, so Macs with Intel CPUs must run the program under Mac OS X ...

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 20 ...

, Entourage has been replaced by the Macintosh version of Microsoft Outlook which uses a

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the P ...

-based layout engine (used by Safari) instead.

References

External links

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

Version history

See also

References

External links