Paypal doesn't like IE 5
Hi.
I'm new here, so forgive me if this question has been asked before. Actually, it's 'these questions' - I have several, so for simplicity's sake I'm dealing with them in separate threads.
Firstly, as the header says, I'm having problems with Paypal, eBay's online payment service. Basically, when I go into Paypal, I can only see the headers, so I can't access my account.
Thinking my system might be suffering from some corruption or old problem which has since been cured, I updated it to OS 9.2 and IE 5.1.7. No improvement.
Then I contacted Paypal, who suggested I configure my browser to accept all cookies (it is), check that I have 128-bit encryption (I do) and clear all cookies (I did, more than once). No improvement.
At that point Paypal gave up, saying
"If you are encountering difficulties using Internet Explorer on Mac OS 9.x and below, we ask that you consider using a different browser at this time. The error you are encountering is a well-known and documented issue with Internet Explorer's inability to recognize valid security certificates. Approximately one year ago, Microsoft announced the end of development
for future versions of the Internet Explorer browser for the Mac. With this in mind, you will want to begin looking at various alternatives available for your Internet browsing needs."
My question here is are they right and, if not, is there anything else I can try to get it working again?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
I'm new here, so forgive me if this question has been asked before. Actually, it's 'these questions' - I have several, so for simplicity's sake I'm dealing with them in separate threads.
Firstly, as the header says, I'm having problems with Paypal, eBay's online payment service. Basically, when I go into Paypal, I can only see the headers, so I can't access my account.
Thinking my system might be suffering from some corruption or old problem which has since been cured, I updated it to OS 9.2 and IE 5.1.7. No improvement.
Then I contacted Paypal, who suggested I configure my browser to accept all cookies (it is), check that I have 128-bit encryption (I do) and clear all cookies (I did, more than once). No improvement.
At that point Paypal gave up, saying
"If you are encountering difficulties using Internet Explorer on Mac OS 9.x and below, we ask that you consider using a different browser at this time. The error you are encountering is a well-known and documented issue with Internet Explorer's inability to recognize valid security certificates. Approximately one year ago, Microsoft announced the end of development
for future versions of the Internet Explorer browser for the Mac. With this in mind, you will want to begin looking at various alternatives available for your Internet browsing needs."
My question here is are they right and, if not, is there anything else I can try to get it working again?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Comments
I use Safari and Firefox (neither work on OS 9) and they work great. Best thing I can do is tell you to look for an OS 9 Browser that is maintained...
Thanks for the input.
Thanks - do Opera or Mozilla work with both OS 9 and OS X?
Not knowing anything about browsers, would you recommend Opera over Mozilla or vice-versa, and if so, why?
Don't hold out on IE 5 for Mac, it is known to be downright stupid on many web development fronts. Opera and Mozilla are better alternatives.
Well, I've tried Opera, which does display my Paypal page after a minor hiccup, but took ages to load pages (FAR longer than Explorer) and when I tried hitting the maximise button it maximised the edges of the page off the screen! I had to abort the program to get back into it. Not a tempting start - I think I'll leave Opera aside pro tem.
The one program nobody has mentioned is Netscape which, I've finally recollected, does actually come with OS 9. Is it still around and/or supported? And is there a reason why no one has suggested it?
Plus I have another question, but that's under a new thread.
Thanks again for your thoughts on this matter.
Alan
I don't like IE 5.
What's the big deal?
Seriously though, as pointed out earlier, Microsoft isn't going to update IE for Macintosh any further. Not even Apple really support OS 9 any more, so it may be worth your while to consider Mac OS X ? you'll be glad you did. m.
And actually [can of worms time here:] I did consider OS X - I bought an iBook a year ago with it on it. The much-vaunted "uncrashable" [
Originally posted by alanwoollcombe
The one program nobody has mentioned is Netscape which, I've finally recollected, does actually come with OS 9. Is it still around and/or supported? And is there a reason why no one has suggested it?
I use it as a test browser, because it represents all the poor people using 5+ year old browsers. Although the 4.8 release was somewhat recent it didn't do much and was probably developed for a major company that funded Netscape for it.
Nothing renders pages worse Mac side except maybe iCab. I don't recommend it to anyone. Every platform I've seen that has Netscape 4.x also has access to Mozilla-based browsers (OS 9, Irix, Solaris, Linux, BSD, etc).
So Mozilla is better/faster/more feature-laden - but is it stable enough and easily-fixable enough for a novice end user like myself?
Or which browser do you recommend that will run on OS 9 (and hopefully OS X too, so that I can use it on my other machine when it's up and running)?
Originally posted by alanwoollcombe
So Mozilla is better/faster/more feature-laden - but is it stable enough and easily-fixable enough for a novice end user like myself?
Or which browser do you recommend that will run on OS 9 (and hopefully OS X too, so that I can use it on my other machine when it's up and running)?
I wouldn't say faster, its modern and requires more memory then Netscape 4.x. It is better yes, because it has more features and renders pages more consistently. You can run it on any number of platforums so you won't have problems there.
Easily-fixable enough? Not sure what you mean. Your not compiling it or anything. I don't use Mac OS 9 but you simply download a compressed file, double click (to expand) and there you have it. Newer versions of Netscape (6+) use Mozilla components so if you were to go that route it would be almost identical.
Your crutch is OS 9. Newer builds of Mozilla aren't designed to run on it, they cut support long ago. Others on this thread IIRC mentioned a group that compiles newer builds for OS 9. If not you will always find the Mozilla 1.x builds somewhere for OS 9.
Originally posted by IonYz
Nothing renders pages worse Mac side except maybe iCab. I don't recommend it to anyone.
Wow, that's very strange to hear because before I switched to OS X, I used icab for a lot of pages that IE couldn't handle. In fact, weirdly enough, icab did a great job with java heavy pages that my other browsers choked on. Of course, I haven't used it in ages since, so it might have fallen behind.
Originally posted by Leppo
Wow, that's very strange to hear because before I switched to OS X, I used icab for a lot of pages that IE couldn't handle. In fact, weirdly enough, icab did a great job with java heavy pages that my other browsers choked on. Of course, I haven't used it in ages since, so it might have fallen behind.
Much of my work envoles web standards, high levels of stylesheets and the like. For HTML3/4 pages, iCab does alright. They also use ECMAScript, an open-source alternative to JavaScript. Don't work with much js since I believe most scripting should be server-side so I'm not sure what advantages ES has over JS.
Easily-fixable enough? Not sure what you mean. Your not compiling it or anything. I don't use Mac OS 9 but you simply download a compressed file, double click (to expand) and there you have it. Newer versions of Netscape (6+) use Mozilla components so if you were to go that route it would be almost identical. Your crutch is OS 9. Newer builds of Mozilla aren't designed to run on it, they cut support long ago. Others on this thread IIRC mentioned a group that compiles newer builds for OS 9. If not you will always find the Mozilla 1.x builds somewhere for OS 9. [/B]
By easily-fixable, I mean that, if anything goes wrong, a novice like myself can easily find the information to fix it. Basic stuff, not anything that requires a programmer's skills.
What worries me is when you say "they cut support long ago": if anything goes wrong, where would I be able to turn for advice? If it's minor and/or I can find solutions easily enough on forums such as this, then fine. Or then again, maybe I'm just worrying about something that's unlikely to happen.
As it happens, I've downloaded Mozilla Version 1.3.1 from Wamcom and am running it at the moment without problems. Do you know if this is the latest, stable version for OS 9?