[Satchmo]

I'm on Jag, but a few of our older boxes in the studio just don't cut the mustard so they're on OS9.
They're okay running Explorer, but the lack of tabs (Safari has spoiled me), and rather sluggish performance has me looking for another browser.

I tried Opera, but it doesn't seem to be that much better. Any other suggestions?

[Brad]

WaMCom

Web and Mail Communicator - is an open source software project, providing modified versions of Mozilla client software.

Unfortunately, they got stuck at 1.3.1 and haven't been able to update since. Still, it's Mozilla and it runs on Mac OS 9. It's worth a shot. I put it on my mother's old PowerMac 8600/250 and it usually runs marginally better than Internet Explorer.

[Satchmo]

Thanks, Brad.
Running Mozilla 1.3.1 and so far so good...much faster than I.E.

[Escher]

Satchmo: Have you tried iCab? Even the most recent version of iCab is available for OS 9.

Escher

[Brad]

iCab is indeed a very nice browser, but OMG is it horrible at rendering. It's as bad as OmniWeb was during its worst days. CSS is practically nonexistent.

iCab would have been the ultimate browser is we were still living in 1999, but the web has grown and iCab's rendering capabilities have long since fallen by the wayside.

[rampancy]

If you want a really fast browser, there's Lynx (text-only) for OS 9 too.

[usurp]

i had a similar issue. i got a 20th anniversary mac for my parents, its terribly slow and runs os9. i tried icab, WaMCom, mozilla etc.. and they were all too slow to startup and use. sadly the best solution for my parents was to keep them on IE.

[Brad]

Well, one of the reasons for me actually forcing my mother to start using Mozilla (WaMCom) was that Internet Explorer was borking some web pages because of its piss-poor CSS support. It wouldn't even render my own home page properly. Also, after a while I noticed that IE would throw up the black and white beach ball cursor for as long as a whole minute on some pages. Yeesh!

Yes, it takes a while longer for Mozilla to start up, but I do think that the overall performance is at least on par if not sometimes a little better than IE. Plus, it'll do a 10x better job at rendering web sites. The widgets, of course, are a little wonky, but they look and behave a lot like Windows which is what my mother uses at work all day long (though, she uses IE6 there).

The 20th Anniversary Mac has a 250 MHz 603ev processor. My mother's 8600 has a 250 MHz 604e, not too far off from yours. Maybe you could give it another try? How much RAM does yours have? I have 96 MB in that 8600 and it manages to just barely squeak by.

[autodata]

Originally Posted by Brad WaMCom Web and Mail Communicator - is an open source software project, providing modified versions of Mozilla client software. Unfortunately, they got stuck at 1.3.1 and haven't been able to update since. Still, it's Mozilla and it runs on Mac OS 9. It's worth a shot. I put it on my mother's old PowerMac 8600/250 and it usually runs marginally better than Internet Explorer.

Thanks! I've been casually looking for a free pop-up blocking OS 9 browser for some time. The latest version of mozilla I could find was 1.2.1 which didn't have pop-up blocking.