Safari and Firefox will not download from a particular site

Question

Greetings,
I own a Dual 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 (FW800) with 2 MB L3 cache per processor and 1 GB DDR SDRAM with the Mac OS X Version 10.4.11
My Safari version is 4.1.2 (4533.18.5)
My Firefox version is 3.6.10
I want to access this site for the information that it contains:
http://www.gis.mt.gov/
Safari has never worked with this site.
Firefox has worked very well for the past 2 years.
Recently, very recently, both browsers do NOT work with this site. I called the state's technical support and was informed:
1) That it is a hit or miss possibility for Safari and Firefox to work properly with this site; and,
2) That the site is optimized to operate with Internet Explorer for Windows.
I am unable to find and to download a recent version of Internet Explorer for Mac. Microsoft ended support for this browser (version 5.2.3) on 12/31/2006. I did download this version and it did not work.
Open this site: http://www.gis.mt.gov/
Click on “Property Map” located in upper left area of the screen.
On new drop-down, click on the “OK” button
A new window should appear with a map of Montana, with outlines of its 56 counties. If this map does NOT appear; then, the problem is being shown.
If this map of counties does appear; then, GREAT.
On this new window and in lower right hand corner choose a city and click on the “Go” button. A new window with the city shown should appear. If this city does not appear; then, there is the problem.
In the past I have used the “Property Map” most of the time because it contains information most useful to me. I want to continue using this “Property Map” into the future. The problem is that my results with both Safari and Firefox is a blank window after completing the above steps.
Help ! ! What can I do different/change/modify?
Dave Arbenz
[email protected]

Answer 1

I called the state's technical support and was informed:
1) That it is a hit or miss possibility for Safari and Firefox to work properly with this site; and,
2) That the site is optimized to operate with Internet Explorer for Windows.
There is your answer. Many US Government sites are the same - they simply WILL NOT follow the necessary web standards to make them Apple and/or Safari compliant.
The only thing you can try is to go to Safari's Develop Menu and try using Internet Explorer as the User Agent.