recommend me a browser for older Mac OS 10.6

[berniedd]

I have 5 nonUnibody Macbooks and run Snow Leopard in them. I'm not keen on updating to newer OS as that would slow them down, besides the fact that Apple no longer offers upgrades for them off the 'net. Machines run fine but for the internet, I will soon be needing updated browsers. The Safari, Firefox and Chrome I have in them are the latest for the OS (and still OK for Internet use, for now)but are not supported anymore and can't be updated. Any suggestions?

BTW, I have a few Powerbooks and iBooks that run PowerPC processors (OS 10.5, Leopard) and much older Firefox and Safari versions. The solution I found was to run Aurora browser. Aurora 20.0 is an offbeat Firefox-derived code that was released in 2013 specifically for Mac OS 10.5 and now I can access my yahoo and gmail properly.

 

[bunnspecial]

Firefox 45 ESR will continue to be supported with a security updates for another year or so and will run on Snow Leopard. You might have to hunt a bit to find the SL-compatible version but it's out there.

For PowerPC, you actually have two really good options. Tenfourfox is a Mozilla fork based on the current ESR(45 for the current version). Cameron Kaiser, the developer-actually builds it in four versions-G3, G4, G4+(7450 series), and G5 with optimization for each variant. As the name indicates, it will run on Tiger(10.4) but also runs great on Leopard. It is slow and has deprecated certain plug-ins like Flash(the most current PPC version is very outdated), but prioritizes security over all else.

The other is Leopard Webkit, which is based on the Webkit framework and is Safari as far as OS X is concerned. It is maintained(the most current release is from earlier this month) and is much faster than TFF although less secure. As the name indicates, it only runs on Leopard but will work equally as well on G4s and G5s.

My contingency plan when Firefox 45 ESR loses security support in Snow Leopard is to transition to the former two browsers operating under Rosetta.

 

[Johnny2Bad]

Turn off Java in the browser (JavaScript is OK, in fact you probably can't use the 'net without it).
Place one machine in between all the others ... whether wireless or wired ... and make that your security sentinel.

You have many options there, including a PPC version of Linux, but I liked the combination of LittleSnitch and HenWen, which is an OSX implementation of Snort, an Open Source Network Intrusion Detection System (NDIS). It runs on OSX 10.4x
You don't need a super fast computer or recent OS to do this job, assign one of your lower speed Macs to the task.

 

[uc50ic4more]

I have a MacBook Pro from '06 running 10.6 (I hardly ever use it). Being 32 bit my browser options are limited. There were some Chromium builds that supported it beyond when Google dropped 32 bit support for Chrome, but that stopped a while ago.

I have to second the suggestion of Firefox's 45 ESR.

 

[B320i]

I'm another Snow Leopard stalwart - having given up on OS X beyond this release for a variety of reasons.

It was my understanding that Firefox 45ESR lost support in January or February 2017.
I would have recommended SeaMonkey, but they too have jumped off the "legacy OS" bandwagon with the latest release in December of last year.

Really, you're at a point where the only option is using unsupported browsers OR not using the machines online. To do the former is "at your own risk," I'd suggest using an AdBlocker and NoScript to keep things a bit more secure. Avast! still support 10.6.8 if you're that concerned about A/V protection.

The best option would be to virtualise a Linux distribution of some sort, and use the supported browser on that.

 

[bunnspecial]

Originally Posted By: B320i
I'm another Snow Leopard stalwart - having given up on OS X beyond this release for a variety of reasons.

It was my understanding that Firefox 45ESR lost support in January or February 2017.


45 ESR will be supported to June of this year https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

Unfortunately, Apple has made actually building for SL difficult as a lot of necessary APIs have for 10.6-10.8 have been deprecated from the current version of Xcode.

 

[berniedd]

Thank you all for the helpful suggestions. Firefox 45ESR it is then for the Snow Leopard Macs.