Can I upgrade to another browser?

[mraroid]

Hi...
 
I bought a powerbook G4 15".  It has a 1.5Ghz G4 inside, 1.5GBs of RAM, and is running 10.5.8 (leopard).
 
Is this the most current OS I can load onto this powerbook?  The browser gives me error messages when I try to go to gmail.  Gmail says this version of safari is not supported.  I could not find a version of Firefox or Chrome to run on it.
 
Any browser upgrade paths?   I use this powerbook mostly to support my Color Classic.  I need something to burn software to a CD, that I can then move to the Color Classic. 
 
Any advice appreciated.  I hope I posted to the correct forum.....
 
Thanks
 
jack

 

 

[EvilCapitalist]

TenFourFox should work well for you, though it will report as a mobile browser to get the fastest experience.  You can change it so that it reports as a desktop browser but it'll slow down a bit.  TenFourFox (and Classila on the OS9 side) are it as far as relatively up to date browsers for PPC Macs go.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

And as far as the OS goes, 10.5.8 is the most current version of OS X you can run.

 

[johnklos]

Check out:

http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

and

https://sourceforge.net/projects/leopard-webkit/

 

[johnklos]

Also make sure you use ClickToPlugin with Safari / Webkit because there are lots of security issues with older plugins, particularly Flash. ONLY allow ClickToPlugin to load Flash when you absolutely need it, like with hulu.com. For other sites, like YouTube, ClickToPlugin will automatically allow HTML5 versions of videos to load, so Flash isn't necessary. The videos will play better as well.

 

[mraroid]

Thanks everyone for the many tips.  It looks like I had two issues.  I installed my Leopard CD and did a permissions repair.  Then I did a disk repair.  It found three issues on the disk and fixed them. 
 
After that I was able to run a far less buggy version of Safari.  At least good enough to down load TenFourFox.  I will now check out the other links and suggestions.
 
Yea! 
 
I am on a striped machine.  Nothing but the OS.  I will start looking for tools now. 
 
Thanks everyone.  I never would have found that browser with out the help.
 
jack

 

[mraroid]

Also make sure you use ClickToPlugin with Safari / Webkit because there are lots of security issues with older plugins, particularly Flash. ONLY allow ClickToPlugin to load Flash when you absolutely need it, like with hulu.com. For other sites, like YouTube, ClickToPlugin will automatically allow HTML5 versions of videos to load, so Flash isn't necessary. The videos will play better as well.

Thanks for the tips Johnkos..  I usually run SpeedTest by Ookla:   

http://www.speedtest.net/

This requires the current FLASH.  Because I am running an old OS (10.5. , is the current FLASH unavailable to me regardless of what I do?

How the heck do I turn bold text off??!!  Time to reboot I guess.... 

jack

 

[johnklos]

Try this non-Flash one:

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

Also, see this thread here:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23619-flash-version-16-for-powerpc/

I think Flash is up to version 21. Perhaps I should update PowerPC Flash to version 42 so it won't need to be updated for a while.

Note, again, that this Flash plugin is horribly insecure, so do not use it without ClickToPlugin!