Y does FF look like an 80 browser on my mac

R

ron45

Registered
That's it in a nut shell. My mac is a motorola G5 2 Gigahertz, 4.5 gigs of ram.

A modest system by today's standards. But safari has never run well on it.

Firefox is even worse. It's just boxes and text and the text never fits in the boxes, the boxed sometimes overlap making pages a mess to look at. By comparison Safari is a gem.

My first impression was this is a marketing orgy. I don't care if it's free or not.

I have no interest in what most of that stuff does. However, I want a browser that shows me today's internet not the military/university war machine version.

Of course if I knew what some of that stuff did it might help FF look like a real modern browser. My interest in mac is recording and music related everything else is fluff but useful fluff. For another year or two anyway. Soon this will be new pay for view tv and I'll leave like I did w/tv in 1983. Hmmm Might be a song in there somewhere.

Ron
 
FireFox for PPC is stuck with version 3.6.28 - when the Intel version is now version 15...
I rarely even try Firefox on my old G4. I usually use either Webkit for PPC,
http://code.google.com/p/leopard-webkit/
or TenFourFox.
http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/
There's a specific version optimized for G5 processor. Scroll down the page for that choice.

There may even be a problem with the formatting for specific websites, when running on PowerPC.
If you want, you can provide a link to your worst pages, so I can try it on my PPC Mac.
 
Well again, just what i need to know, thank you. I'll take a look at the flood gap page and try it. I'm not craze about the firefox `let us help you to consume more' vibe so if 104fox is better I'll probably not use firefox much It bugs me however cuz I know most people don't have my experience with it. More importantly if something is basically wrong with my setup I'd like to get it resolved. I don't have problems in my audio apps. But they are as old as my processor. I do the permissions repair and disk check at the first sight of trouble. But I don't do much else, Should I be doing other stuff? Defrag is not relevant anymore is it. Or? I don't mind preventative stuff I can do on my own.

Ron
 
I like to clear out the browser caches occasionally, especially if you have sudden drop in browser speed.
 
I do that anyway to keep the marketeers guessing. Just means you have to sign in more often at forums and what not. Probably a waste of time. But it gives me a false sense of power. That's a little like `your sentence structure is awkward but your punctuation is poor. {;^)>

Thanks for all the timely help. Glad you wrote again I forgot to check out the link. I'm in the middle of an online music lesson, and my focus is not what it used to be.

Ron
 
Hey DeltaMac, I don't get it. It's a nice solid color page with a bunch of text, period. If I clik on a link to the `no scrip't vid, I get more nice turquoise and no vid just text in boxes.

I never liked Cnet much, it always seemed like they designed their page to intentionally get you do download the wrong thing. You have to go over the result of clicking on a D L link with a magnifying glass or you are just wasting time with DL you don't want.

Ron
 
I don't think that the browser caches have close to the effect of the actual cookie files.

You could also try logging in to another user (create a new user just for this purpose), and try whichever browser, and the sites that give you problems - to see if the odd page display is specific to only your user account (which is likely).
I'd still like to try some site where YOU have problems, to see if there's any way that I can determine why you have page loading problems, if you can provide the URL link....
 
If you mean page loading problems it's every page via firefox or sheep's clothing/10 4. It seems identical minus the plugins in fire fox.

NO Plugins:Wow was that a new area to be aware of i.e. plugins as malware vectors and Apple dumping security for us paleomac users. Think Different my a**, they are all just thinking money.

The opening page of ten four was just text no graphics or any other class of content.

I have been assuming sort of, that this is the way everyone sees it. If not please let me know and I'll send you or do what ever you suggest. I spend a good deal of time on the web reading and learning about playing jazz. Anything that will keep that functioning smoothly is a priority for me.

`Hope I remembered to say thank you yet again. And I will try the new user idea. I had no idea that could make a difference. Is it that it would go around any possible poor configuration choices, such as, it appears, the disabling of the preview app. I just finished reading it may not be a good idea because adobe without the Preview `cloak' is a possible vector for mal-ness.

Ron
 
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ron45 said:
That's it in a nut shell. My mac is a motorola G5 2 Gigahertz, 4.5 gigs of ram.

A modest system by today's standards. But safari has never run well on it.

...
Click to expand...
What do you mean by "safari has never run well on it"? I am typing this response on a dual 2.0 GHz PM G5 with 2 GB RAM and fully-updated MacOS X 10.4.11 including Safari 4.1.3. I have 12 other browsers installed, but Safari is the one I use. Suffice it to say, Safari runs well and always has.

Although lack of hard drive space does not explain a fair reading of the phrase "has never run well," I still ask:

What is the capacity of your hard drive and how much of it is free space? This is important because your Mac needs 10% of its hard drive capacity available as free space so that its virtual memory system will work properly.

BTW, the G5 processor was supplied not by Motorola, but exclusively by IBM.
 
Do yourself a favor, download and try Stainless.
It is simply the cleanest clutter free free browser there is for your G5.
No doubt though, it takes a bit of getting used to.
 
MisterMe said:
What do you mean by "safari has never run well on it"? I am typing this response on a dual 2.0 GHz PM G5 with 2 GB RAM and fully-updated MacOS X 10.4.11 including Safari 4.1.3. I have 12 other browsers installed, but Safari is the one I use. Suffice it to say, Safari runs well and always has.

Although lack of hard drive space does not explain a fair reading of the phrase "has never run well," I still ask:

What is the capacity of your hard drive and how much of it is free space? This is important because your Mac needs 10% of its hard drive capacity available as free space so that its virtual memory system will work properly.

BTW, the G5 processor was supplied not by Motorola, but exclusively by IBM.
Click to expand...

Fair and astute questions. The primary boot drive shows 698 gb in round numbers and 639 available. There are three others with most audio stuff on them.

"But never run well, [generalities often come back to hunt me]I don't know how long its' been going on, but thru most of 10.4.1.1 as often as not I'd hit com. Q to close safari and I'd get a message saying `safari quit unexpectedly what should I do?

Or it would just plain crash during browsing with the same msg usually.
 
It sounds like you are running a 700 GB replacement drive. It should be formatted HFS+ (Journaled), popularly known as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). BTW, there is no such OS as 10.4.1.1. It is MacOS X 10.4.11.

A tried-and-true test of system integrity is to login to a test account on your machine. If everything works well in your test account, then the problem is that you munged your primary account somehow. If things do not work properly in the test account, then the problem is that your system is munged.

If the latter is the case, then you should boot into your System Restore DVD or a bootable MacOS X DVD and run Disk Utility/Disk First Aid.

There are other standard repairs that can be performed, but I am not willing to tell you about them until the less dangerous attempts fail.
 
tried the new acct. today. Opened an updated version of firefox and went to yahoo a graphics laden page. Just text and text cells with text running outside the cells at the bottom boundary.

Ron
 
ron45 said:
tried the new acct. today. Opened an updated version of firefox and went to yahoo a graphics laden page. Just text and text cells with text running outside the cells at the bottom boundary.

Ron
Click to expand...
Would it be too much to ask to repeat this post in English? You might also try posting a screen shot.
 
ron45 said:
tried the new acct. today. Opened an updated version of firefox and went to yahoo a graphics laden page. Just text and text cells with text running outside the cells at the bottom boundary.
Click to expand...

Your post is not too understandable, and I can echo what MisterMe posted. What do you mean when you went to "yahoo a graphics laden page?"
It really would help if you could post a link to the actual page that is giving you difficulties, along with a screen shot, so we can compare what we get, with what you see...
 
Hi DeltaMac, We were discussing the behavior firefox which has only been displaying text. This is a thread on the subject of my browser only showing text on web pages. Yahoo is a graphics laden page. I'm sure I don't need to break that sentence down for anyone.

Since my browser only sees or shows text, I figured it would be a good test to go to a page with a lot of graphics. In fact the page is heavily laden with graphics. In view of our discussion of my browser not showing graphics, only text, I figured it would be useful to let those reading know that on the yahoo.com page I see only text and boxes instead of a page laden with graphics. Even if you take the sentence out of context as you did, which part of graphics and laden is not working for you? If I may ask.

And right now I can't open firefox because "it isn't supported on this architecture". So I can't do a screen capture. However it would show a turquoise colored page with only text in boxes that often don't surround the text if that is what they are intended to do. Instead a line or two of text relating to the other text in the box is below the line out side of the box. That's all there is to see. You guys want a url:http://www.yahoo.com this is it.

Once you saw that page you would know that your page doesn't look like my page. Don't we already know that? Or is it that the missing comma between yahoo and `graphics laden page' convinced you that my observations are not to be trusted?

In other words what would you know that you don't know now?... if I could get a screen shot.

And yes you are right, I am impatient with the idea that `yahoo a graphics laden page' means nothing to you guys.

Ron
 
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OK, OK, I get it. I just don't usually see the word 'yahoo' used in a way that made it appear to be a verb... (punctuation does have a purpose in life :D )

Anyway, if you tried Firefox in a fresh user account that you created just as a test, then something about the main system is giving you problems. I would suggest that you could try downloading and reinstalling your current combined updater. I'm thinking that the problem could be caused by system caches, or the system fonts caches.
Try rebooting to Safe Boot mode, then restart to the normal system. That can reset the system font caches, and may help your issue with FireFox.
Have you tried one or more of the other PPC browsers that have been suggested here - such as OmniWeb, Stainless, maybe even iCab?
Also, can you try Safari in your other user account?

A screen shot of your issue might help determine if you have a Firefox issue, or a font issue, or something else - such as other issues that your description does not cover, such as completely missing graphics.
 
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