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

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.)