Best Web Browser for Old Computers

[#1 Rhapsody]

What is the best web browser for Mac OS 9? My computer is a iMac G3 233mhz with 32mb RAM. In its early versions Internet Explorer runs quickly, but can't work with the newer versions of HTML and has bad graphics.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I hear iCab is decent.

[#1 Rhapsody]

Actually iCab is really slow on my computer. I really like the startup time and looks but it takes forever to load this page http://www.pure-mac.com. I've done a test of many browsers and their times and I'm working on putting it up here.

[nixgeek]

Originally Posted by #1 Rhapsody

Actually iCab is really slow on my computer. I really like the startup time and looks but it takes forever to load this page http://www.pure-mac.com. I've done a test of many browsers and their times and I'm working on putting it up here.

Which version of iCab are you using? There is one specifically for PowerPC Macs running OS 9. I actually have the version that's there for 68K Macs running on my Quadra 650 and it does take a while to load some pages. However, I've found out that on the 68K version the CSS rendering isn't that good and now that they've stopped development for the 68K version it probably won't get fixed. As for the PowerPC version, I haven't tried it in a while so I don't know if the new Mac OS 9 PPC version has some improvements on CSS rendering. However, this is a known issue with that browser. Sometimes disabling CSS rendering makes iCab work faster, but then you lose the ability to view some pages properly.

Still, it is a decent browser for 68K and PowerPC Macs running Mac OS 9 or earlier. I would definitely pick it over IE or Netscape.

There is another browser you can try called WaMCom, which is basically a port of Mozilla 1.3.1 to Mac OS 9, but seeing as it hasn't received many updates for a long time, you would be quite out of date.

[Mikuro]

iCab 2 is great for older computers. iCab 3 is awfully slow, but has much better support for new web features (most notably CSS2) than version 2. Personally I recommend iCab 2. It's the leanest browser available for OS 9. Load time, RAM usage and general speed are much better than Mozilla, Netscape or IE, in my experience.

Netscape 3 was fairly lean, as well, but it's not as advanced as iCab, and it may be hard to find these days.

The most modern browser for OS 9 is Mozilla. If you search mozilla.org, you can find an unofficial build for OS 9 that's based on a more recent version of Mozilla than the official one. I used that for a while alongside iCab 2. Running it with 32MB of RAM might be pushing the limit, though; Mozilla is a memory hog.

[austinrick]

Same question for an older system. Besides this eMac, I also have a Performa 6360 with 136MB RAM + the Sonnet G3 processor upgrade (awesome!). I'd say it runs as well as that model could hope to.

My old IE 5.2 is about useless anymore. I'm not fully satisfied with the Netscape I'm using, but sorry, can't tell you exactly which version it is (machine is 100 mls away).

I'm mostly wondering if there is a consensus on Best Browser for OS 8.6.

thanks!

[Mikuro]

Originally Posted by austinrick

Same question for an older system.

Same answer.

I found that unofficial Mozilla build I mentioned before. It claims to run on 8.6 or newer. http://wamcom.org/20030624/macos9/

iCab 2 (fast but old) will run even on 68k Macs running System 7. iCab 3 (slow, but fairly modern rendering) will run on any PPC Mac running OS 8 or higher.

I used to run all three of those browsers on a system with 96MB of RAM, so they should run fine on yours. I'd recommend enabling Virtual Memory if you plan to use Mozilla, though, since it's a bit of a hog.

[Texas Mac Man]

Mac Web Browsers, Present and Past
http://darrel.knutson.com/mac/www/browsers.html

Cheers, Tom