I've had my own encounter with this problem...the portal page at sbc.yahoo.com has started in the last few weeks (or possibly longer, although as with most ISP portals, I don't make much use of it) to gently warn those of us accessing it with IE 5.x, "You are currently using Internet Explorer 5.1. For the best experience using Yahoo!, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest version of �Safari or Mozilla".
It doesn't seem to make much difference in functionality there...yet. Although there are a few icoms in the top right corner that don't go anywhere when I click them now. Ebay's web pages (& Paypal's, too, since they're the same company) are larded with lots of JavaScript that seems to give them marginally useful functions, mostly cosmetic, as well as some serious functions like preventing your browser from reading from its cache when you go back to a page (presumably to keep the time left & price data as up to date as possible.) Thus I have found that Ebay works faster if you turn JavaScript off in your browser. The core functions like bidding & adding items to your watch list seem to be handled by a CGI engine, which is indifferent to your choice of browser, still (although your browser does have to be capable of accessing an https page to log in.) Perhaps if you turn off JavaScript, like I do, when accesing Ebay, the pages may work better for you. (I don't use Paypal, so I can't say for sure if that's the problem *there*.) I must say that I haven't really had much problems myself with IE 5.x at either site, although I have had some at others. I keep JavaScript off there mostly for speed, as there seems to be an awful lot of linked .js pages that have to load to get to My Ebay at first -- & whenever you go back to a page, too, since, as mentioned, the pages are written in such a way as to require re-downloading them every time you access one. Tabbed browsing was made for just such a site! I'm starting to use Wamcom Mozilla 1.3.1 for more and more of my online sessions, although there are a few places that seem to prefer IE. But I see the handwriting on the wall.... As others have written, we can't expect commercial sites to keep designing for older browsers, especially to older browser's non-standard quirks...but we can & should expect them to design to web *standards*, especially now that there is a generation of browsers & email clients that are *finally* implementing more and more of them, including CSS 2 and the most recent DOM. One aspect of web standards that is not often adherred to on web pages, regretably, is that of writing so that the features of a page "degrade gracefully" when encountered by earlier browsers. Classic Mac users are ill served by this development in several ways, as it is unfortunately a result of history that the full emergence of these more competely standards-compliant browsers (the Gecko family, Opera, Safari, etc,) did not occur until well into the OS X era, inspite of the fact that many of these standards, as proposed & promulgated by the W3C, go back almost a decade. Browser Wars played a large role in this. IE was for a long time the only *reasonably* standards-compliant browser, although it had its failings in this regard, as well as its own non-standard, proprietary M$ tags, that were catered to by Word & FrontPage as authoring tools. Still, IE 4.x & 5.x -- especially the Mac versions -- were a lot better (& less buggy) than NS 4.x. (Or WinD'OH!s IE!) It is a Good Thing(tm) that companies are now increasingly dumping M$-flavored junk on their pages, & embracing (however slowly & uncertainly) a neutral-standards future, but that means that some of the advanced functionality that they put in is now lost on Classic OS users, or worse, crashes them. -- Bill Art page: <http://geocities.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
