OS 9—killed off several years ago—has been almost forgotten. But almost.
Enter Classilla, a project to get a modern port of Mozilla’s browser running on OS 9:
Classilla is bringing back web browser support to your classic Macintosh – built on WaMCoM, a port of Mozilla to classic Macintosh systems, using the same technology underpinning the popular Firefox browser. It’s completely free and it’s open source, and it’s standards-compliant. Use it without cost or restriction; or, if you’ve got the skills, hack it and make it your own. Classilla brings your wonderful old Power Macintoshes back to life and back online.
But before you go dust off your old clamshell iBook, read the fine print:
Classilla doesn’t replace, and isn’t designed to replace, the excellent iCab. While it will of course replace Mozilla and WaMCoM if that’s what you’re using, and has much better support than Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, there are still many sites you may need to use a combination of browsers to view. Classilla is much faster, and its JavaScript is much more robust, but iCab still has the edge for CSS and layout. And at least for awhile that’s how it’s going to be.Support those who still support the classic Mac; if you’re serious about using the Web on an OS 9 system, let Alexander know by registering iCab. Then use Classilla where you can, and iCab where you must, and get all your bases covered.
Pretty cool.