Active X controls on Mac Browsers

[Chinashaw]

Hi,

I have a question on Active X and the Mac. My company has just installed MS CRM and I need to access it via a web browser that uses Active X. As far as I know the only one I can use is Internet Explorer for the Mac, which is now, happily, defunct.

Does anyone know of an alternative browser or solution? I don't (yet) have an intel based Mac, this might come in the new year sometime.

Thanks,

Nicholas

[robbieduncan]

There is no alternative. Active-X is a proprietary Microsoft technology. They will not provide plugins for non-MS browsers or any specifications to people wanting to provide solutions for other platforms. If any group or company attempted to do this MS would probably sue them out of business. This is just one of the ways that they lock people into their products preventing competition.

[mkrishnan]

God, why does MS continue using that awful platform? :rolleyes:

[clevin]

see if parallel has ppc version, or u can use virtual-pc from M$.
M$ is reducing the use of activex in IE7 (which won't do it at default), hopefully this would got abandoned by the industry soon. Its very risky and is the cause of vast of virus and trojans on windows.

[MisterMe]

God, why does MS continue using that awful platform? :rolleyes:Microsoft sells that awful platform. It is the corporate web developers who implement it that I hold responsible :mad:

[robbieduncan]

see if parallel has ppc version

Parallels does not have a PPC version. If they did it would only allow you to run other PPC operating systems, not x86 ones. Parallels is virtualisation. VirtualPC is emulation.

[clevin]

Microsoft sells that awful platform. It is the corporate web developers who implement it that I hold responsible :mad:

u are so right, this is free market, they buy into that is just because they find it fits. Thats just the way it is.

[Westside guy]

Microsoft sells that awful platform. It is the corporate web developers who implement it that I hold responsible :mad:

You forgot to put quotes around "developers" there. ;)

ActiveX makes it easy for people who don't really understand the web to develop apps that can hose your machine. There's a reason Javascript runs inside a sandbox.

Actually, I think MS is completely at fault, and it really was intentional in this case - ActiveX was another "embrace, extend, extinguish" move by MS. They saw the potential for the web to kill their core business a decade ago, with its promise of platform-independent computing. ActiveX has successfully locked in a lot of corporations not just to Windows, but to Windows+IE. Whenever a trade mag (e.g. Network World) polls CIOs about Firefox and IE security, you'll see a large number of them tend to repeat some variation of "We'd love to move to Firefox, but our intranet apps are just too tied to the IE platform".

[Chinashaw]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. I have just now upgraded my old Powerbook for the new macbook pro, so will be back in corporate heaven with XP and all that in the new year.
Though as my IT manager is a Mac freak :D , will no doubt find all sorts of attempts to avoid using XP for the CRM system going on in the new toy, I mean work tool, oh hell work avoidance machine :D .

Have a merry christmas and an even merrier new year.