Classilla, a New Port of Mozilla To Mac OS 9

oberondarksoul writes "Every now and then, you hear about a new port of Mozilla to one of the lesser-used platforms. Recently, a new version of Mozilla has been released for Mac OS 9 — an operating system no longer sold or supported, and with no new hardware available to buy. Dubbed Classilla, it aims to provide 'a modern web browser running again on classic Macs,' and the currently-released build seems to work well on my old PowerBook 1400 — despite being a little memory-hungry."

Comments

Re:Who cares?

[MichaelSmith]

I mean, seriously, who cares?

Somebody will. Most of the projects I work on at home come under the category of "because I want to". I am currently building a digital clock which has been in the planning process for twenty years.

The software I work on in my day job is much older than MacOS 9. A lot of my work involves shoehorning modern stuff into it so this type of project is of interest to me.

Re:Does anyone even use classic anymore?

[Moridineas]

We do at my office (publishing)

Well, we're down to only having 3 computers that solely run OS9, and more that still run apps in classic though.

We use Quark Xpress 4.5 and a particular set of XTensions. Quark's upgrade path, to put it bluntly, sucks. Quark5 and 6 were IMHO utterly useless and Quark 7 is basically "as good as" Quark 4.5 in my book. We do use quark7 but the problem is that Quark7+the extensions we need run far SLOWER on the quadcore macs than on 800mhz g4s/g5s etc. Sad. Has nothing to do with the merits of OS9 versus OSX, it's just because the newer versions of the apps we need and use on a daily basis, well, suck.

The writing is on the wall though, we're one or two hardware failures away from being Os9/classic free.

Re:Who cares?

[sugarbomb]

schools ... you would be surprised at the number of elementary school class rooms that still have OS 9 apps and machines that run them ...

First OS9 story in 7 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. This is the first OS9 story on Slashdot since this one from February 2002. Incidentally, that one is the *only* other one.

Well, either that, or the Firehose is broken.

The Answer Lies In Your Web Server Log Files

[MichaelCrawford]

If you analyzer your logs with a tool such as Analog, you'll find that a significant number of your web sites' visitors are still running Explorer or Netscape versions 3 or 4. At least that's what I find for my sites - and it's been that way for a long time.

There are lots of reasons for this. Some people cannot afford the new hardware required for Mac OS X. Some of those who could buy the hardware have a big investment in software that uses Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) dongles that wouldn't work on OS X even if the newer Macs were equipped with ADB - they haven't been for years.

Some software has been discontinued, with the vendors out of business, and so will never be ported to OS X-native. If the software is useful enough to the end user, then they'll keep running Mac OS 9.

Finally, some people simply don't know how to upgrade. Until very recently a relative of mine was running Internet Explorer 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.2 - no doubt riddled with well-known security holes, but she simply didn't know better. I bought her Mac OS X Tiger for Christmas (Leopard won't run on her G3), then visited soon after and installed it for her, then downloaded and installed all the updates.

All of these are reasons that I plan for Ogg Frog to support the Classic Mac OS.

(And there are many Macs out there that are too old to run Mac OS 9; they'll be running 8.6 or some such.)

Re:The Answer Lies In Your Web Server Log Files

[merreborn]

Out of 2.9 million hits from IE browsers on our most active site since the beginning of the month, roughly 5200 are from versions of IE older than 6. That's about 0.1% of our IE users, and 0.05% of our total users.

Also, I've caught obvious UA spoofing in our logs -- one script reported a different, random UA with every request -- many of which were browsers you'll never actually see in the wild -- like "Lotus Notes web client"

What's more, even the biggest sites don't offer an A-grade experience for older browsers. Hell; I remember not being able to access microsoft.com using IE 3 in 1998! If microsoft dropped IE 3 support a decade ago, surely most of the web can as well. Even Yahoo offers a limited experience to users using old browsers, and facebook throws "get a better browser" messages up if you visit with IE6.

In the end, it's just not economically feasible, in many cases, for developers to spend time supporting 0.05% of browsers, especially when those browsers are so old that they support only a fraction of modern standards. I salute your efforts to make your properties accessible to _absolutely_ everyone, and I'd love to do the same, but we just can't justify the development cost, for the sites we run. We'd be spending thousands of dollars to support a number of users we can count on one hand, to the detriment of our tens of thousands of users on modern platforms. Frankly, if any of our frequent contributors are on older platforms, it's almost more cost effective for us to buy those few stragglers modern netbooks.

This is true of all software. Sure, we could write everything to run on DOS and Mac OS 7, but it'd be expensive to develop and test on so many platforms; there'd be minimal, if any gain in adoption; and we wouldn't be able to take advantage of more recent technology. In the end, taking the "support absolutely everything" philosophy just isn't a sound business decision.

Re:Who cares?

[Pandrake]

I've got three MacOS 8.6 that are the main production line for our company. Nice to know I still can use a web browser on those machines for solutions made to be used by all other computers (WinME, WinXP, MacOS X, etc..) since IE 5 crapped out a long time ago and nothing else would run half as well as it on the old Macs.

Re:Who cares?

[larry bagina]

Name me one school that still uses old Macs, especially ones in Mexico where the price disparity between a Mac and non-Mac computer is amplified. A couple weeks ago I saw a couple power macs running OS 9 (or maybe even 8) on a local news fluff piece. I think they were being used for the school a/v program.

Re:Who cares?

[jmenezes]

I care.

My daughter is getting old enough now to use a computer, and I've dug out an old iMac G3 DV that was given to us by a friend, and loaded several older pre-school games my mom had lying around from when my brothers were little.
Now, not only can it be a great little preschool computer for her, but it can also be used online in a pinch.
Or perhaps letting her have access to several of the show based sites that have content for the kids
(Sid the Science Kid, Sesame Street, and several other PBS, Disney and Nick JR. shows)

I could now let her go to those, without having to worry about what she could get into on my computer.
(she decided to rename a good chunk of my songs last time she sat on my computer)

Bottom line:
Is it state of the art, the next big thing? of course not.
but it did just make some older equipment just that much more useful.

Re:Who cares?

[niktemadur]

If you're a teacher in Mexico using an old Mac, this is of no interest to you. You don't have Internet access anyway. Nice try though.

Nice try indeed. Harking back approximately two decades, Mexico became the first country in the American continent to begin installing fiber-optic telephone wiring for widespread use, even before the United States. FYI, this happened in Baja California.
Nowadays, the majority of Mexicans hooked up to the Internet do so through the telephone monopoly Telmex, Telnor in the Northwestern states (both owned by one of the ten richest men in the world, Carlos Slim). A minority hook up through TV cable services, fewer still via satellite (Starband), usually in remote rural areas where Telmex or Telnor have not arrived yet.

Nationwide, junior high schools in rural areas have adopted a teaching system via satellite known as telesecundaria, which can easily be adapted for Internet access and may have already done so.

Now, if you go to any urban area in Mexico and peruse the secondhand stores with electronics, chances are that you'll bump into an early generation iMac in working condition, and be able to purchase it dirt cheap, as the casual Mexican computer user has only used Windows in his/her entire life, so these things may sit on the shelves for awhile. As anecdotal evidence, a friend with a graphic design business once found and bought three iMac Graphite models in one swoop, a five hundred dollar deal, at one of these stores.

Therefore, if you're a savvy teacher in Mexico, or just plain a Mac user with a penny to pinch and a little luck, Classilla could potentially be a godsend.