HTTPS and why it's a problem for early Mac OS
19 May 2019
Introduction
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a protocol used for securing information sent between a web browser, and a web server. HTTPS is standard HTTP served over an SSL connection. This creates an encrypted connection between the two systems. HTTP was the standard protocol used before encryption became necessary on the internet.
HTTPS was still in the early stages of adoption when Mac OS 9 was released (1999), and became more commonly used towards the late 2000's. Most websites are now inaccessible to early Mac OS (pre OSX) users due to the the lack of HTTPS support in older browsers. There was an effort made beginning in the early 2000's to bring modern standards and support to Mac OS 9 with Classilla. Classilla has been an incredibly capable web browser but the project was abandoned in 2021 and no longer receives updates.
Unfortunately early Mac OS users are mostly out of luck when it comes to modern web browsing. Google is still accessible over HTTP, but almost all results come from HTTPS sources. Web design standards are often changing and older browsers have not been able to keep up. This results in modern websites not being displayed correctly, or not at all.
Websites still served over HTTP
- FrogFind
- Macintosh Garden
- System 7 Today
- MacOS9Lives.com
- Cornica
- 68k.news
- Mac Hut
- Mac Mothership
- The Vintage Mac Museum
Other websites that work on Classilla
Website Directory
For a more comprehensive list of websites that work on older browsers, visit the Sloop Website Directory.
Tips
The following tips can improve browser performance for older Mac OS systems:
- Increase the memory allocated to your web browser
When the older web browsers were released websites were much more basic and required very little system resources - Disable Java applets & JavaScript
Support for Java was ancient and most scripts will crash the entire browser or prevent pages from loading. - Disable Style Sheets (CSS)
Most modern websites won't display correctly, disabling CSS will tell the browser to load text only. - Create Custom Style Sheets
There are several browsers that let you create custom style sheets that override all websites visited. This can help if you prefer a minimalistic/custom browsing experience across all websites. - Disable Images
Images on modern websites are not optimized for browsers of the 90's and early 2000's. Oversized images can cause the browser to run out of memory and crash.
Last updated: 2023-2-21
Comments
kayden
19 February 2023
some of those websites don't even work for my system which is a emac so they could not work in general for old imac/emacs like mine and ive also realized that some main sites dont work anymore like gmail which would be cool to have even though i bought my emac because its old is there anyway to fix this with things like internet settings in my preferences or no and sorry if some questions are dumb im new to old apple products
PermalinkGreystash - Admin
19 February 2023
Hi kayden, none of those questions are dumb there's a bit of technical understanding to figure out if you're new to older Apple products.
I'll go through the links and add some more pages. This page has been in need of an update for a while.
Classilla was the only web browser available to Mac OS 9 that was able to visit a small number of modern websites. It was still maintained and receiving updates until 2021, but development has now stopped. It was maintained by a single developer (Cameron Kaiser) who moved on from the project.
Now that Classilla is no longer receiving updates some of the websites that previously worked no longer do due to security incompatibilities. All modern websites are served over the https protocol (e.g. https://example.com) which require security certificates to communicate with the web browser. Classilla no longer receives updates of current security certificates so there's now a mismatch of Classilla's understanding of them, and the new certificates that are being used on websites. This results in the web browser not being able to connect to a website through SSL/the https protocol.
Most other web browsers available to older Mac OS systems don't have any understanding of the https protocol and will refuse to connect to any website served over https.
The other problem is that websites are now built with designs/layouts that don't work with 20-30 year old internet browsers so they won't display correctly even if they are served over the http protocol.
To browse the internet on these older computers you need to find websites which either haven't been updated since the late 90's/early 2000's, are served over the http protocol or were intentionally built for older websites.
This is part of the goal for two of my other projects:
Unfortunately Gmail will never work due to all of the reasons mentioned above, but there are alternatives which require a bit of a workaround... Here's one way I got email working with one of my computers - there's a bit of work involved but there are probably other ways of achieving this.
Hopefully some of this information helps! Check back on this page soon for updated links.
PermalinkPrayag
21 September 2021
Wait, does this mean that Mac OS 9 comes with no SSL/TLS at all, requiring it to be baked into programs? Or did it have some built-in SSL protocol?
PermalinkGreystash - Admin
21 September 2021
As far as I'm aware there was no support at all built into the system. There may have been some packages within the Macintosh Toolbox but I've never looked into it. Any implementation seems to be app-specific and purpose built.
HTTPS was mostly unused by the typical user at this time so it wasn't very common.
PermalinkRoman
23 April 2020
Hello, I am a strong supporter of OS 9 and it’s sad that the internet can’t function as it used to be in the early 2000’s - with the internet not able to render most if not all websites, what about email through outlook express ? Can I still set up email at least?
PermalinkGreystash - Admin
30 July 2020
Hey Roman, I've had some success but I haven't yet tried with services such as Gmail etc. See my post on Email Setup to see how I did it with Outlook Express.
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