The world of Linux browsers

I've been using live-CD Linuxes for about a month now, and that means a bunch of new browsers. Besides Firefox, I've used SeaMonkey, a Mozilla offshoot that looks a lot like Netscape Communicator, and Konqueror, which doubles as a file manager in KDE-desktop Linux systems.
This is my first day using SeaMonkey with Blogger, and it's about 95 percent there. I got a warning that Blogger might not save my post, but it did, although it took an extra minute or two.

And when doing HTML links (at least you CAN do them), I get a funny "paste me here" kind of graphic after I hit the chain-link icon. I have to click away from the window to get rid of it, or risk pasting the very icon from the blogger program in my text window ... and sometimes my cursor itself disappears in the SeaMonkey window. But it does work. And I love Netscape 4.8 for the Mac, so it's nice to have a fast version of that venerable platform. For the moment, I've given up on downloading POP mail and prefer to use Web interfaces for Yahoo! Mail and the like, so the mail component isn't that important to me. but as browsers, both SeaMonkey and Konqueror are pretty nice.

Another great, even-smaller browser is Dillo, which doesn't really play well with CSS-heavy pages, but is so damn light on the system that it's a pleasure to run.

Dillo and Konqueror are Linux-only, but SeaMonkey is available for Linux, Windows and OS X, so you owe it to yourself to download and try. It's a great alternative to Firefox, and it loads way, way faster.

Speed up Yahoo! in old browsers

Get your Yahoo! mail quicker and slicker by pretending to be a PDA.

Just go here: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/ and navigate from there. It's stripped down to fit on PDA screens, but it will also make the Yahoo! experience that much better on older, slower, less-capable Web browsers.

Netscape 4.8 for Mac is here

(Crossposting to This Old Mac and This Old Browser)

Even though you're supposed to need Mac System 8 to install Netscape 4.8 (and since I can't seem to get a clean copy of the 7.6.1-friendly version from system7today.com), I found another source for the elusive NS via www.pure-mac.com (go to www.pure-mac.com/webb.html for the site's browser selection).

It led me to Netscape's FTP site, and this file: ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/english/4.8/mac/complete_install/Comm4.8_Complete_US.bin

My first attempt to dowload a clean, unstuffable copy in Netscape 4.7 failed, and IE 5 wouldn't let me do it at all. I gave 4.7 another try, and I got a good download. After unstuffing, the install program said I needed System 8-point-something to do the install. So I went into the Netscape Installer folder and clicked on the Netscape Installer icon ... and the damn thing ... installed. Brought all my preferences from 4.7 along with it.

Everything looks just as it did in 4.7, but it seems a tad faster (could be the long day). I'll have to keep testing.

In other news, I installed Outlook Express 4.5 ... didn't work with DSL Extreme or Gmail. I haven't bothered to try Gmail with Netscape, but I just might do that. It's amazing that of all the programs out there that run on System 7.6.1, Netscape is the ONLY one that works for e-mail. I did get Usenet news through Outlook 4.5, but it didn't organize it as well as Netscape, and if OE can't do e-mail with today's servers, it's good for nothing. I suppose there are POP mail services out there that will work with these older programs, and I'm not saying  I won't investigate, but if DSL Extreme won't run on it, I'm in serious doubt that much else will, either. (Even Yahoo lists Netscape 4 as being compatible with its POP service .. not so for OE 4.5 or 5).

CTRL-B won't bold on IE 5 in the Blogger Beta

I didn't expect it to work, and it doesn't. The fact
that it works at all is a minor miracle. I guess I
shouldn't hold it against Google that Google Docs
doesn't work in IE 5 or even in Safari.

There's a wait between posts

But nothing too arduous.

The pages might not have loaded as quickly ...

But Blogger Beta will play with Internet Explorer 5 for Mac. And as I wrote previously, since you can't code HTML automatically as you can with IE 6 and Firefox, It's almost as easy to send e-mail posts.

One thing you can do, even in IE 5, is select and create post labels. Does it do bold? I will find out.

E-mail to Blogger -- instant gratification

My e-mail post made it here in seconds. Works great, less frustrating.

So even if this new Dashboard doesn't play well with IE 5, I just might move everything over anyway.

And did I mention that there's no wait after publishing a post because new entries are saved to a database, and the blog itself is built on the fly when someone accesses it. I can't call it an improvement just yet. It is different. It does make posting easier. But how does it affect the reader's experience? I'll have to check on that.