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Level 2

231 points

Google [web ] via Internet Explorer 5.1.6 is suddenly inaccessible

All of a sudden, after years of using Google as my home page with IE 5.1.6 I can not get to Google Home Page.

Yesterday, I had a first ever crash [?] on the site I use to look at TV listings [zap2it]. The message said the internet preference folder was damaged and should be trashed. It was and on restart a new one appeared. All well and good, I thought.

The next time Mr H turned on the computer and went to IE he says he began to type in the search before Google came up, but I've done that before and all that happened was part of the searched word went into the main search box on IE and the rest went into Google's box and then I had to fix it by typing the whole word in the Google search box. This time Google never appeared. In the progress box at the bottom of the screen it shows loading 0 bites of 5855 [or some number like that] the progress wheel spins and it goes nowhere and can't be stopped.

I still use OS 9.1. I use Internet Explorer version 5.1.6. I can get to Google maps or videos or news with IE, but if I click on Google Web it doesn't work. My screen freezes and I have to do a restart. I can use IE to get anywhere else [well almost anywhere else, but it's been that way for years]

Interestingly enough, I am able to access Google through Netscape, version 7.0.2.

I have cleared cache and history; I have run disk first aid and disk doctor; I have rebuilt the desktop.

Yes, I know I should switch to OS X and I will soon [as long as I can still access OS 9 and all those files that won't work in X], I just need to get this fixed now. Of course I can use dogpile or another search, I'm just wondering if this symptom means something bigger than just Google via IE is in trouble.

I e-mailed Google help and they also suggested deleting all cookies - but I didn't know if that was a PC suggestion or a Mac suggestion. [Ididn't do it] I also have wondered about going back to my last hard drive backup and just removing the IE app and replacing it with the one in my backup that worked - but I don't think the app is the problem since it works fine for all else [not for this site though...] and I don't know what I should be replacing.

Help, please,
Mrs

Dual 450 G4, Mac OS 9.1.x, and old PowerBook 170 and ancient [faithfully still working] Mac Plus

Posted on Jun 9, 2007 9:04 AM

Best reply

Baby-Boomer-USofA

Level 9

58,098 points

Posted on Jun 9, 2007 2:08 PM

You actually trashed the whole Internet Preferences Folder including all your preferences still in there?

Actually, you were suppose to just trash the Internet Preference file/document which is inside the folder.

See if updating to the latest & last version of IE for Mac will help.
Internet Explorer (Classic) 5.1.7

Internet Explorer 5.1.7

Internet Explorer v5.1.7
"WARNING:" Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and is not providing any further security or performance updates.
Accordingly, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac is no longer available for download from Microsoft.

Or, you can try the following w/your older version of IE:
Once a week Go into the system folder>preferences folder & trash the following preferences:
finder
ASLM
PPC Registration Database
Cache.waf-found inside the MS Internet Cache folder
MRJ Cache folder-a new one will be recreated.(If not found go to System folder>Application Support>MRJ Cache folder-trash all you find inside-( DO NOT TRASH THIS FOLDER)
Download Cache-found inside Explorer Folder
Downloads.html-found inside Explorer Folder
History.html-found inside Explorer Folder

Rebuild your desktop w/extensions off. Use Techtool Lite or Trash*Desktop - may delete Finder comments to rebuild your desktop w/extensions off. Does a better job than manually & you avoid all the finger gymnatics. You just have to hold down the shift key to shut off extensions.
Restart to turn the extensions back on again & empty the trash.

Good luck!

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44 replies

Mrs H Author

Level 2

231 points

Jun 12, 2007 1:42 PM in response to Mrs H

Elmer Fudd works, as does Google Canada - in English and it all works on IE - [and I do plan to download Mozilla too].

Thanks for this new suggestion on wireless transcoder, but it's not necessary for me now.

Can anyone tell the answer to my button question above? How can I give you all a boost in the point ratings for helping me?

Jun 13, 2007 5:04 AM in response to Mrs H

The facility to offer points appears when you are responding to posts. Maybe the opportunity to award points has passed now. But not to worry Mrs H, I feel sure everyone is just happy to help and isn't too concerned about the points at all.

Jun 13, 2007 9:14 AM in response to Mrs H

My web page at
http://informatics.open.ac.uk/google/
now includes the following:

The cause

My tests indicate that google.com delivers web pages dependent upon browser type. The code responsible for this is probably unaware of IE 5.1.7 for Mac OS or IE 5.2.3 for OS X and hence it delivers pages designed for another browser and/or OS. My tests indicate that these IE browsers for the Mac hang indefinitely because of the following CSS (style) line which confuses them:

#gbi,.gb2{display:none;position:absolute;width:7em}

It is ironic that this style is intended to apply to an iframe which these browsers don't display.

A fix for Google

Google could replace the iframe with either a JavaScript generated table or a server-side include. Either of these should result in a similar appearance on most/all 4/5 generation and later browsers.

Why is IE still used on Macs?

Some webmasters do not appreciate that there are still many users who prefer to use this old browser particularly on old Macs that are too slow to mount OS X. There are still a lot of these around (including early iMacs) used as second or home Macs. I am not aware of any browser for OS 9 which is free of significant bugs. iCab may be the best but it still makes a mess of displaying some pages. I have not tested Opera for a while but all earlier versions had a serious bug in the image rendering engine. All Mozilla browsers I have tested have a well documented serious memory leak on non-memory protected (OS 9 and earlier) Macs - many casual users will be unaware of this but those who hit several thousand links a day may find they suffer irrecoverable data loss.

Xserve Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Jun 14, 2007 9:42 AM in response to Mrs H

I saw this on 3 OS 9.2.2 machines (PB G3, iBook / 366, and a B&W G3).

At first I thought it was the new ISP I had to get (Verizon DSL) but had the same result at the local county gov't building.

Pleased to report that the "Fudd Fix" works great, as does the somewhat less convenient text-fone workaround suggested by another. iCab got used as the workaround in between.

Jun 14, 2007 2:01 PM in response to Mrs H

I have added the following to my web page at:
http://informatics.open.ac.uk/google/

Although the new Google pages contain much invalid html and ill defined 'iframes' and 'targets' it is not easy to explain any of the above observations. There has, however, been a considerable history of IE vulnerabilities resulting from ill defined iframes. Furthermore the reported vulnerabilities are consistent with the serious data loss some have experienced while making repeated attempts to access google.com. With this in mind I played with the iframe tags and made an unexpected discovery:

Adding any white space (eg line feed or space) after the </iframe> tag removes the problem.

I have no explanation for this IE quirk as it is contrary to normal html concepts. This must be the simplest and least risky (unlikely to affect other browsers) modification that Google has ever had to consider.

My web page now has the following introduction:

This issue has a disproportionate effect upon disadvantaged individuals and groups ( poor, disabled, third world, charities, etc ) who do not have the option to move to OS X with their old slow hardware. All other legacy browsers have more serious disadvantages than IE - see below.

Xserve Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Jun 16, 2007 1:40 AM in response to n.hillyer

This issue has been fixed by Google. Many have received the following email:

Thank you for writing. We understand you've been unable to access Google while using Internet Explorer for Mac. We've made some changes recently that may have resolved the problem. It's possible that you'll need to clear your browser's cache and cookies for the changes to take effect.

We appreciate your taking the time to bring this to our attention: please let us know if the error persists.

Regards,
The Google Team

Xserve Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Jun 16, 2007 3:16 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Hi, Neville -

Thanks for the heads up. I just checked - it works fine, now.

Mrs H Author

Level 2

231 points

Jun 16, 2007 11:44 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

I hoped if I asked my question here eventually someone from The Google Team would respond.

Thank you, Neville.

You might be interested to know that when I sent Google a note similar to my original question here [through the support page on the website], I received a reply offering a lot of suggestions for what I could do to solve the problem, none of which worked nor applied, and none implied that the issue might be with Google.

"Many have received the following email..." Not I!

But, be that as it may, thank you for letting us know of the fix. And, thank you for the fix!!!

Jun 16, 2007 2:28 PM in response to Mrs H

I hope nobody thinks I am connected with Google. My contact details etc are here:
http://neville.hillyer.eu/

Strictly this was an IE bug compounded by invalid Google HTML and poor Google HTML layout. Had Google used conventional, but not obligatory, layout with a line feed after their ‘/iframe’ tag none of this would have happened as I explain on my page at:
http://informatics.open.ac.uk/google/

Xserve Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Mrs H Author

Level 2

231 points

Jun 17, 2007 8:00 AM in response to n.hillyer

Obviously, I did think you were with Google. It looks like the signature "The Google Team" on your note above is your signature. In fact, you are showing the e-mail sent to some by Google.

Dual 450 G4 Mac OS 9.1.x and old PowerBook 170 and ancient [faithfully still working] Mac Plus

Jun 17, 2007 11:14 AM in response to Mrs H

Google has done some changes to there homepage , I see a new toolbar. This might just be a temporary thing with the google's homepage , if it still doesn't work after some time you might just want to try yahoo.

Some G3 Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Jun 19, 2007 7:28 AM in response to Mrs H

The following has been taken from:
http://informatics.open.ac.uk/google/bug.html
All links work on the original page!

Google bug

The purpose of this page is to document what I have discovered about the 'bug' responsible for the Internet Explorer (IE) crashes caused by Google.

I have reduced the code required to cause the crashes to:

<html>
<head>
<title>Google bug</title>
<style type="text/css">
#gbi { position: absolute; display: none }
#gbh { position: absolute; width: 200% }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<iframe id=gbi></iframe><div id=gbh></div>
</body>
</html>

Google's original code did not include: type="text/css" but I have added this to make it valid HTML 4.

Almost any changes to the above code (except changing div to p) stops the crashes especially:

1. Adding any doctype declaration - necessary for valid HTML
2. Adding any content (including white space):
a. between the </iframe> and <div id=gbh> tags - optional but conventional layout might have a line feed here
b. between the <div id=gbh> and </div> tags - these tags are redundant unless they are placeholders for content to be added by script.

Those who wish to try the above code can hit the following links (both pages lack any content):

* With a doctype declaration - does not crash Mac IE
* Without doctype declaration - danger - this will crash Mac IE - may cause serious data loss.

My conclusion is that the primary fault is Google's for not using valid code with a doctype declaration but the browsers should never have been released with such a serious vulnerability. Since the browsers are no longer being maintained and IE 5.1.7 is only one of two reasonable browsers for pre OS X Macs (see) web designers should take care not to reproduce Google's unfortunate code.

Mrs H Author

Level 2

231 points

Jun 20, 2007 12:59 PM in response to Don Archibald

Don,

I just did the download. Mirable dictu, mozilla imported on its own all my bookmarks from Netscape - I just have to add the IE ones. It kept all my formating and preference info for netscape too.

How can I tell if I need to import those IE plugins you mention?

The opening page said
"Congratulations! You've downloaded (or compiled) a copy of Mozilla. This means that you've volunteered to become part of the Mozilla testing community. (If that doesn't sound like something you meant to do, you might be better off with one of our stable releases.)..."

I am concerned about this "testing community and offer for a more stable release - yet there is none for OS (

Did you get this message at the start? Did you worry?

Otherwise, it just looks like a cooler version of my old Netscape.

Mrs H

Mrs H Author

Level 2

231 points

Jun 21, 2007 12:41 PM in response to Mrs H

Just read Neville on memory troubles with Mozilla. Pretty scarey. http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4767833#4767833

I'm going to look at iCab.

Mrs H

Google [web ] via Internet Explorer 5.1.6 is suddenly inaccessible