Do some websites out-right block connections from IE6 browser?

[justacruzr2]

There is an alternative way to browse that some may be unaware of.  Paste this into your browser:

 

http://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=

 

and then type the domain name after the equal sign.  For instance:

 

http://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=google.com

 

I have found this useful for the really "overweight" websites since I only have dial-up.  This method will only give you the text...no pictures or videos etc. 

[Commodore]

Nice service! Thank you.

Two similar way (but the images are maintened):

http://www.mowser.com

http://google.com/gwt/n (google mobilizer)

EDIT... A "demerit" note for google mobilizer! :-/

I am just realized that doesn't more work with https pages.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Commodore

[justacruzr2]

Nice service! Thank you.

Two similar way (but the images are maintened):

http://www.mowser.com

http://google.com/gwt/n (google mobilizer)

EDIT... A "demerit" note for google mobilizer! :-/

I am just realized that doesn't more work with https pages.

 

Prego.  And for your suggestion (Mowser.com) that I will try....Grazie, amico mio.

[Nomen]

> There is an alternative way to browse that some may be unaware of.

> Paste this into your browser: (www.textise.net)

Turning the web back into usenet. Something old is new again...

Funny thing - using the "textise" service doesn't look a whole lot different to me than using FF 2.0 on most websites. If you have enough host-file entries to block a lot of stuff, you can turn most web pages into mostly text. This is especially true of web pages reporting on news stories like TV and newspaper sites.

Edited November 28, 2015 by Nomen

[jaclaz]

> There is an alternative way to browse that some may be unaware of.

> Paste this into your browser: (www.textise.net)

Turning the web back into usenet. Something old is new again...

 

Hmmm.

All these years using Opera and User Mode vs. Author Mode does not make that particularly "new".

 

jaclaz

[vinifera]

I have to thank sdfox7 for that Active Scripting tip, I got here without having to press stop script once! I have Firexfox 8.0.1 and Opera 11.64, but my lowly PII 333 takes a little while to start those up, they use more memory, and I mostly use the browser to get files and customizations for Win98. IE6 SP1 is much faster and less of a pain to use now!

 

if you aim for such weak system, you're better off with Opera 10 but before 10.5 (then it became heavy) as Unity and more crap was added

as for Firefox, why not use 3.6 ?

version 4 and onwards are basically version 4.x

(and bloat)

Edited November 28, 2015 by vinifera

[justacruzr2]

 

I have to thank sdfox7 for that Active Scripting tip, I got here without having to press stop script once! I have Firexfox 8.0.1 and Opera 11.64, but my lowly PII 333 takes a little while to start those up, they use more memory, and I mostly use the browser to get files and customizations for Win98. IE6 SP1 is much faster and less of a pain to use now!

 

if you aim for such weak system, you're better off with Opera 10 but before 10.5 (then it became heavy) as Unity and more crap was added

as for Firefox, why not use 3.6 ?

version 4 and onwards are basically version 4.x

(and bloat)

 

I agree regarding Opera.  I tried Opera 10.10 on my XP system and it was way too slow.  Was trying it because FireFox 8x has a problem entering text on certain webpages like when posting a reply.  Also has a problem with Captcha's.  Tried FireFox 27x to see if that made any difference but it didn't...and it too is bloated.  Would also agree that all versions since 4x are basically 4x with more bloat.  Don't understand why Mozilla decided to release a new version every month when there doesn't seem to be much difference between the newest version and the previous version.  And many times something that worked fine in the previous version now doesn't work in the new version.  Also don't know why FireFox continually tries to update itself when every version I've tried I have checked the Manually Update box and it tries to do it anyway.  FireFox 3.6 is what I use in my 98SE and ME systems and it works quite well thanks to KernelEx.  FireFox 8x works also but it will not save any bookmarks...a big drawback.

[LoneCrusader]

Try adding this to the registry (it's the good old IE9 spoof):

Den, I'm trying to use this under XP x64 (for a program that uses parts of IE and isn't working with IE8) and it doesn't seem to have any effect. Any suggestions? Could you make a .REG file for both x86 and x64? Thanks!

[dencorso]

I'm sorry, LoneCrusader, but that spoof fools sites which drop you because of a browser not "new enough", but it ought not to help in the case of programs that depend on parts of IE, for which IE8 is not enough. Moreover, AFAIK, that the exact same spoof should work on x64, just as well as on x86, if you remove the (really unneeded) line on "Platform", were it to work at all (however, I may be wrong in this). 

[LoneCrusader]

Essentially this program (a game) opens a page inside it's own "client" using parts of IE. IE8 is supposed to still work with it (at least under XP x86, can't find any references to x64 specifically), but it does not, and I'm trying all possible angles. I tried your entries and checked it at the User Agent sites and it does not appear to have worked, I'm still getting IE8 reported.

[LoneCrusader]

Small update... I managed to get IE8 spoofed to IE9 under XP x64 using a slightly modified version of the .REG file linked on this page. (The file may work as-is, but I added some lines to it first based on dencorso's earlier entries and this page. Also discovered this tool in the process, essentially a "User Agent Switcher" for IE.) Neither of these solved the problem however.

 

I have a feeling it is directly related to the inability to use Google, Yahoo, etc in IE8. Anyone had success getting around this on any version of Windows or IE 6/7/8?

[Drugwash]

Dunno if it's in any way related but recently one of my AHK scripts that was supposed to download certain elements off of Mozilla webpages started returning gibberish instead of HTML code and files. It's also based on the IE built-in API and therefore it's using either IE6 on 98SE or IE8 on XP-SP3. It used to work when I last tested it in october 2015.

 

I never use Google but I just tried mail.yahoo.com in IE8 under XP and it brought me the login screen (I didn't go further). I have a feeling it may be related to whether the application calling the APIs is a known web browser or not.

[LoneCrusader]

Dunno if it's in any way related but recently one of my AHK scripts that was supposed to download certain elements off of Mozilla webpages started returning gibberish instead of HTML code and files. It's also based on the IE built-in API and therefore it's using either IE6 on 98SE or IE8 on XP-SP3. It used to work when I last tested it in october 2015.

 

I never use Google but I just tried mail.yahoo.com in IE8 under XP and it brought me the login screen (I didn't go further). I have a feeling it may be related to whether the application calling the APIs is a known web browser or not.

 

In my case, what it boils down to is that the developers of the game in question (League of Legends) could care less about their players who still run the game on Windows XP. Their forums are literally plastered with reports of the problem (a never ending white loading screen when trying to access part of the in-game online store), which are never even graced with a response from a Moderator or Developer. The problem is not always specifically limited to XP, but it seems to come and go and it seems that the "recommended fixes" found here and there from other users work for the later systems. It may also be a problem that I am running the game under XP x64 instead of regular XP x86, but who knows. The game works, I just can't use parts of the store. So when I need to do so I guess I will just have to log in on a Vista or later machine.

 

 

Back on the IE9 Spoof front, I noticed that when I first implemented it and opened Internet Explorer 8, Google (my homepage) started to load properly for a split second and then reverted back to the "cannot display" rubbish. So apparently there is some other "secondary" way that these sites are detecting the browser version besides reading the User Agent.

[Drugwash]

They could be injecting some javascript or something else that reads file version of some key IE components. I noticed a couple days ago that User Agent Switcher by Chris Pederick doesn't work for Pale Moon 25.8 (Atom/XP version). It used to work for Firefox 13 though but I haven't used that one in a week or two.

Have you tried to disable/enable active scripting in IE advanced properties? Maybe this has something to do with the issue.

 

EDIT:

After a bit of testing I notice failure in wininet -> InternetOpenUrl() when trying to reach the Mozilla Addons site with my script. I've even tried to send different user agent strins such as those pertaining to Firefox 40 and IE9, to no avail. Maybe they now require secure connections exclusively or there is something else I didn't figure out yet. Same function wrapper works in another script for a different site, so it's definitely related to particular sites.

Same thing could happen to you in that game.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Drugwash

[dencorso]

Back on the IE9 Spoof front, I noticed that when I first implemented it and opened Internet Explorer 8, Google (my homepage) started to load properly for a split second and then reverted back to the "cannot display" rubbish. So apparently there is some other "secondary" way that these sites are detecting the browser version besides reading the User Agent.

I'm baffled: I never had any such issues, nor heard about 'em...

My UserAgent, while on IE8 is currently: "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; Trident/4.0)"