Trying to anything on the web is nearly impossible with a browser that is over a decade old (and a single CPU machine that is slower than 1GHz).
You can try disabling java.
But I think most of us use a modern OS and browser for internet access and then transfer things to a USB stick or burn a CD-ROM to get them onto our vintage machines.

You have to have Java enabled in order to be able to search the site and log in.
Classilla wont let me search or log in if I have it disabled.

I would recommend you to install Classilla anyway since IE is pretty much useless for browsing the web there days.

Link: http://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/

so - I was wondering - even though I can login to the Garden jus' fine on Classilla (doing it now in fact) I was thinking it might be nice to code the site so that it renders a little bit more "friendly" - mind you I have no idea what I'm talking about and have no doubt that it would create hours of thankless work for some poor coding schlub/admin; just seems appropriate that when I'm in OS 9 on Classilla and come here I don't encounter compatibilty issues ...

please don't interpret this as a criticism or even a "call to action" - mostly just expressing an observation and opinion

I remember being exposed to a display error when surfing the Garden with Classilla 9.3.2. When opening a category (e.g. games a-z) it wouldn't display all the content but instead randomly insert some whitespace ...

Classilla uses a mobile user agent now. How about a mobile version of Mac Garden with Classilla users in mind? No idea though if Classilla supports stuff like media-queries. You might fake that with JavaScript but that's likely to be very slow ...