3 Supported Web Browsers for Displaying Mathematics
How we display Mathematics
We use a relatively new technology called MathML to display the mathematical formulae on the course pages. This is the World Wide Web Consortium’s recommended standard for displaying mathematical notation and content and is to mathematics what HTML is to Web pages.
Not all browsers support MathML but you will get the best experience if you use a browser that does. You can still view all of the course material if you choose not to use a suitable browser, but you’ll find that the mathematical content is actually drawn as little images so isn’t as nice (and won’t scale up very well if your eyesight isn’t so good).
If you are reading this material then you will already have been nagged if your browser doesn’t support MathML! You will have been given details about other browsers you can use and given the option to continue with your current browser with maths shown as images. The details below provide more information on the browsers that are suitable.
Supported Browsers
We’ve been using MathML to deliver our course material for a few years now. You might think we should have things sorted out by now, but browsers, operating systems (and WebCT) are rapidly moving targets. Below you will find details of the browsers we recommend for accessing this material, along with information on how to get help if things don’t appear to be working properly.
Windows PC Users
The Firefox browser provides native (“in-built”) support for the display of MathML. Any version of Firefox will work fine, though if you are using Firefox 1 or Firefox 2 then you may need to install certain “fonts” (pictures of symbols) to get things like square root symbols etc to display properly on your machine. On the other hand, we have found that MathML in Firefox 3 doesn’t look quite as nice as it did before, but it is still fine.
Some notes:
- If you are using Firefox 1/2 and you are missing any fonts, you will be informed of this when you try to display a page with MathML content. You will be directed to the Mozilla project fonts page to help you download the required fonts. It sounds more complicated than it really is!
- Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 support MathML via a freely available plug-in
(a helper application). It is called MathPlayer, and can be easily downloaded and installed from
Design Science.
You will be guided to the download page automatically if you try to access the course material
using Internet Explorer without having the plug-in installed. Notes:
- If your browser does not have MathPlayer installed then you will be guided to download and install the plugin the first time you try to access the Course materials after starting your browser up. (This could be a likely scenario on your own machine, at home).
- You may find that your computer doesn’t have the fonts (symbols) required to display certain more exotic maths characters. These will show up as red ’?’ marks.
- In the rare event that MathPlayer doesn’t work on your PC for some reason, you might want to use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer (there are many other good reasons for doing this anyway) or continue with Maths drawn as images.
Apple Mac OS X Users
Your best option is to use any (recent) version of Firefox as other popular Mac browsers such as Safari and Opera do not currently support MathML. You can still use other browsers, but mathematics will be drawn as images and you’ll get nagged every time you enter the course content during your browsing session.
Any version of Firefox will work fine, though if you are using Firefox 1 or Firefox 2 then you may need to install certain “fonts” (pictures of symbols) to get things like square root symbols etc to display properly on your machine. On the other hand, we have found that MathML in Firefox 3 doesn’t look quite as nice as it did before, but it is still fine. Follow the instructions that appear on-screen if these are required.
Linux Users
Your best option is to use any (recent) version of Firefox or a browser based on the same underlying code (e.g. Iceweasel).
Any version of Firefox will work fine, though if you are using Firefox 1 or Firefox 2 then you may need to install certain “fonts” (pictures of symbols) to get things like square root symbols etc to display properly on your machine. On the other hand, we have found that MathML in Firefox 3 doesn’t look quite as nice as it did before, but it is still fine. The exact process depends on the Linux distribution you are using. (Many will package up the fonts as separate bundle you can install.)