Has browsing always been this bad?

I'm here with my Quadra 950 which is loaded down with 64mb ram, 18gb hard drive, System 7.6.1, and to top it off it's currently running off the 66mhz PowerPC board.
Yet every session of Netscape 4.08 (It's for 68K but I can't find a version better suited for early PPC) will always result in the system hanging or crashing. I'm just browsing (on WEB 1.0-compliant pages like Jax184, the text side of Google or even some slightly more modern pages which would normally render fine on OmniWeb on NeXTSTEP) and eventually the browser will hang (you can still move the mouse around but you can't click anything and you can't use the keyboard) and I'll have no way to get out of it unless I restart.
It does this with other applications too (IRCle is another program that comes to mind) but it's the worst with Netscape. Was it always this bad or is it just the more modern HTML coding methods that are choking the system?

Web browsing 10 years ago on a 950 was better (I got my first 950 in 2001 or so), these days you are lucky if Google renders correctly on an old browser.

The thing is there are newer better machines for web browsing, use the old machines for what they were good for like old apps.

Try turning off JavaScript. That made Netscape 4.0x a lot more functional when I was still using it regularly a few years ago. It seems that most web pages' implementation of JavaScript has changed significantly since Netscape's time, so with it turned on, I was getting lots of glitches, errors, and crashes.

And of course these days, every web site assumes you are using a fast, modern PC and a broadband connection, so the sheer amount of data is simply far greater than the average web browser from the mid- to late '90s ever expected to deal with. This can be remedied to a certain extent by using the "Mobile" version of a web site (when available), which provides a greatly simplified version of the site, suitable for use on a cell phone or other mobile device with web browsing.

And Heaven help you if you need to browse a Flash-based web site...

Try iCab. It's the last browser to stop support for Mac Classic, and one of (if not) the last to stop supporting 68k. I've never used it because Mac network cards hate me and never work, but I hear it's lovely.

http://www.icab.de/dl.php

Screens of old version(s):
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/453242624_69568e46d6_z.jpg?zz=1
http://lowendmac.com/misc/03/art/icab251.gif

Oh and might I say, that's a very badass Quadra 950 you have there, lol. It's comparable to my Workgroup Server 6150 and that's years newer (mine likely has a faster "FSB", though, whatever Macs use for that). :D

As for whether this happened back in the day - it's definitely the modern code. I used to browse on Netscape 4 under Win3x and Win95 just fine and now if I goto those same operating systems I find that it can barely search Google if that (though Google is becoming a pile of crap, but that's another story). On Win3x Opera 3.62 and IE 5.5 are the best browsers for modern code, and on Win95 that... erm... I can't remember what it's called, but it's a super lightweight Mozilla implementation built off of a slightly older version of the rendering code of the project.

Disabling javascript seems to of worked. The deadly hangs are now bus/address error related bomb errors I can get out of using Bomb Shelter.

Edit: Nope, it's still quite hit and miss still.
I find it annoying that web access on other systems of similar or older vintage can still be quite easy but Macs have always had trouble.

NeXT said:

Disabling javascript seems to of worked. The deadly hangs are now bus/address error related bomb errors I can get out of using Bomb Shelter.

Edit: Nope, it's still quite hit and miss still.
I find it annoying that web access on other systems of similar or older vintage can still be quite easy but Macs have always had trouble.

Click to expand...

I don't recall having near that kind of trouble with old Macs (Quadra 950). But then again, that was about 10 years ago. Are you sure your RAM is good?

I beleive it's okay. You know of any memory testing applications though I could double check with?

NeXT said:

I beleive it's okay. You know of any memory testing applications though I could double check with?

Click to expand...

Just a thought... could be nothing, I just thought it was interesting that you said that other apps not in the browser were also problematic. Have you tried running without the PPC card?

Not sure of a good RAM tester program. If you find one, let me know.

Actually no I have not. After I got 7.6 installed, I switched on the card and went from there. Let me switch it off and try again.

Edit: well for starters, Netscape is faster but will now mainly instantly boot you and close netscape with a type 1 error.