New to MAC's and OSx newbie question

Hi there,

My girlfriend was recently given an ibook. It's the 933Mhz, 256 Mb model. It is running OSx 10.3.9.

It won't display certain websites. Facebook is one of these. When you go to facebook you get a text version of the site and it is un-navigable. Also, she cannot log into hotmail. I have set her email up using the installed mail client, but I would like to get to the bottom of this problem.
I have gone through the software update, but it says it's up to date.

So, I'm wondering if I need to upgrade her to a later version of OSx or if there is some simple software update that needs doing.

I am not familiar with MAC,s. However I am familiar with regular pc's and have limited knowledge of unix/linux.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Adam

Adwarrior said:

Hi there,

My girlfriend was recently given an ibook. It's the 933Mhz, 256 Mb model. It is running OSx 10.3.9.

It won't display certain websites. Facebook is one of these. When you go to facebook you get a text version of the site and it is un-navigable. Also, she cannot log into hotmail. I have set her email up using the installed mail client, but I would like to get to the bottom of this problem.
I have gone through the software update, but it says it's up to date.

So, I'm wondering if I need to upgrade her to a later version of OSx or if there is some simple software update that needs doing.

I am not familiar with MAC,s. However I am familiar with regular pc's and have limited knowledge of unix/linux.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Adam

Click to expand...

I'm not sure but I think 10.4 is the latest OS her machine can run. What web browser is she running? It's possible that she is missing or has some obsolete plugins.

Sorry, I forgot to mention. I have the same problem with Safari and internet explorer for MAC. I tried to install firefox, but that's another website I have problems with. I got to the site and it's kind of like it's waiting for the site to load. Some graphics show up, but there seems nothing there to download.
I'm not sure about plug-ins. Where would I check?

Thanks

Adam

You might want to try Opera to see if that helps.

Hopefully, also some of the guys more experienced with legacy hardware will chime in. I suspect this is mainly a browser issue, but it maybe that an upgrade to 10.4 would help.
I started with 10.5 so my experience with pre-Leopard OS is non-existent.

My mind is kind of foggy this morning, but something else to look at is the amount of free space left on her HD. If that gets too low can cause flaky behavior.

Are they Flash based web sites that are not viewable?
Do you have a Flash extension installed?

I'll check for flash extensions and free disk space a post later.

Thanks guys

Flash plugins

So, how do I check which plugins/extensions are installed?

I mainly use Firefox and one of the pull downs in the Menu is plugin manager. Not on my MBP so I can't give you a screen shot. Suspect Safari is the same.

EDIT: if you don't have Flash installed you ought to get a warning message plus offer to install

I think the clue here is in the fact that the machine is running Panther 10.3.9

I'm running 10.3.9 on an old G4 PowerMac Tower. The OS is now so out of date that hunting down apps that will both run on it and cope with the modern world is something of an art. This is particularly true of web browsers.

First off, forget Internet Exploder for Mac - it's a useless dinosaur, and was never much good to start with (spit).

I have the following browsers on my machine, and all of them are the last/latest versions that will run under Panther 10.3.9. I have just tried using each one in turn to visit a friend's Facebook page. Here's a report on how each one managed. I'll include screen-grabs where necessary:

Safari 1.3.2 - I never use this now. It's virtually useless, as it can't cope with modern CSS or HTML. Facebook loads, but as you can see, it looks very lo-fi and stuff is positioned incorrectly on the page. I'm guessing that this is pretty similar to what you saw:




Firefox 2.0.0.20 - Still a pretty good browser, but can be tripped up by bits of modern coding/scripts it doesn't understand. Facebook looks OK, though.

Seamonkey 1.1.18 - Very good: seems still able to cope with most websites. Facebook looks fine.

Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.6 - I hardly use this at all, but Facebook looks OK.

OPERA 10.3.9 - AFAIK, Opera is the only truly up-to-date browser that is still written to be compatible with Panther. Displays Facebook correctly.

Camino 1.6.11 - My favourite, everyday go-to browser (I'm typing this on it now). I like it best, even though I'm using a slightly out of date version (the current one is 2.0.7). It displays Facebook perfectly well, as you can see:



Hope that has helped. If you can't upgrade the OS, your best bet - as Razormac pointed out - is to try installing Opera and see how you get on.

Hi Guys, I actually upgraded it to Tiger 10.4.11 and now I can browse pretty much most sites.

Thanks for the help guys.

PROTIP: Don't call it a "MAC", some folks 'round these parts get awful tetchy if you do...

MAC stands for "Media Access Control" and is to do with networking, your computer is a "Mac", short for their original name of "Macintosh" (like the Apple, geddit?)

I, for one, don't care; but I have seen some people get really het-up about it! So I thought I'd just give you a warning in advance, as a bit of friendly advice ;P

Adwarrior said:

Hi Guys, I actually upgraded it to Tiger 10.4.11 and now I can browse pretty much most sites.

Click to expand...

Result! And it runs Tiger OK, does it? That's good if it does - I've always understood that Tiger is a bit of a resource-hog.