Tasman_(layout_engine)

Tasman (layout engine)

Tasman is the name of a layout engine developed by Microsoft, introduced with the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5, a new feature in the development of Internet Explorer for Mac (IE mac versions extended back to IE 2). Tasman was an attempt to improve support for web standards, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. At the time of its release, Tasman was seen as the layout engine with the best support for web standards such as HTML and CSS. Internet Explorer for Mac is no longer supported, but newer versions of Tasman are incorporated in some other current Microsoft products.

Tantek Çelik led the team that developed the Tasman engine as the Software Development Lead.

Tasman later became used as the layout engine for the MSN for Mac OS X. There were rumors that Internet Explorer 7 would use the Tasman layout engine, but it instead uses Trident V.

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 MSN for Mac OS X 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 a number of improvements:

Full Unicode 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 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. As a matter of fact the Tasman engine is now used in the Microsoft TV Mediaroom 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.

Typing "about:tasman" in Internet Explorer for the Mac will bring up a list of people who worked on the browser incorporated into the Acid1 test layout.