2019.08.10
Nathan Thompson
Originally Posted: 2006.01.03
I received some great feedback from the Low End Mac readers in regards to our Classic Mac OS Web series.
WaMCom, Mozilla 1.2.1, and the alternate Mozilla port of 1.3.1 were well regarded. All versions have some odd bugs, but nothing too severe, mostly some small interface issues.
One reader had some very interesting notes on Internet Explorer. In fact, his website (in German, English translation) contains some good notes overall. I still say Internet Explorer is an okay browser with some neat features, but I do miss tabs, popup blocking, and a few other extras. Also, I find Internet Explorer is a tad unstable on my Macs. If you can get Internet Explorer running stable for you, by all means give it a try. Microsoft is discontinuing support for Internet Explorer on the Mac, so you might want to grab the download while you can.
Another reader found Netscape 4.x to be very lacking in comparison to the other browsers. Also, while limited, Netscape 3 did a better job for our reader with basic browsing. You can even add Flash and QuickTime support by copying the plugins from Netscape 4.x to Netscape 3. Thanks for the tips, Chris.
Opera 5 had a few fans - over Opera 6.0.3 anyway - but the fans did not suggest using Opera over WaMCom, iCab, or even Internet Explorer. Opera 5 may prove to be more stable than 6.0.3, but it lacks tabs or a password manager. It seems to have some page rendering issues as well. That's understandable, as Opera 5 is now 3 versions old.
Keep the comments coming. I don't have much information on Netscape 6 or 7, and I believe both are available for PPC Macs running the classic Mac OS. Any suggestions for good chat, FTP, or other web applications would be greatly appreciated.