Browser Support • Re: Questions about security protocols and site access

It probably does. Maybe my wording was a little ambiguous. At first, both protocols were set to SSL 3.0 (by me at some point back in time, or whatever) and I didn't know, that's why the sites wouldn't open. After changing both to TLS 1.3 the sites do open fine. My confusion/question is, why does setting lowest protocol to SSL 3.0 prevent loading of those sites if the highest is still set to TLS 1.3?

I downloaded the Pale Moon Commander extension and checked what the default settings are.

The default for the lowest setting is actually TLS 1.0, not SSL 3.0. I think I vaguely remember MC saying something a long time ago, about us having to bump the default lowest setting to TLS 1.0 because websites would fail otherwise. I don't remember the details, but I think setting the lowest setting to TLS 1.0 should be safe.

I just am vaguely aware that some modern websites will react very badly if they query the range of supported versions and see something like SSL 3.0 or lower rather than full-on TLS, and will then refuse the connection for no good reason.

There may be rare edge cases where you'd want SSL 3.0, but those will require manual overrides like whatever was going on before, and may also cause problems with other websites.