Public beta releases of the German iCab browser slowed down over the summer, leaving users with the 1.6a build which some, including me, found to be les stable than the earlier Preview 1.5. I went back to 1.5, but it expired at the end of August, to I am pleased when iCab has released iCab Preview 1.7 this week.

I like iCab, and am hoping that it will be able to carve a profitable niche in the browser market. It is especially useful for older Macs like my PowerBook 5300 due to it's modest RAM and hard drive real estate demands. The entire iCab folder is only 2.7 MB (the application itself is 2.4 MB), and iCab operated happily in a 1.7 MB memory partition (with VM or RAMDdoubler enabled).

While a shootout comparison by MacSpeedZone found that iCab was somewhat slower than Internet Explorer 4.5 and Communicator 4.6.1, that is not the case on slower machines like the PB 5300, which are overwhelmed by the big browsers' ponderousness. While both the latest versions of Explorer and Communicator are satisfyingly speedy (always room for improvment, though) on my G3 233 PowerBook, they bog down horribly on the 5300, while the smaller, less-demanding iCab sails right along.

I am including the comprehensive list of new features and bugfixes in the 1.7 build in an appendix below for those interested.

I have not had a chance to do more than start up iCab 1.7 yet, but my untested impression is that the startup is a bit faster. The latest preview version 1.7 of iCab's new Mac-only browser is available for download from the iCab Website.

And yippee! -- iCab finally has an option to save Web page content as text only (in addition to html source and Web archive), which was the main feature I missed using iCab instead of Netscape or MSIE. Thanks for listening, Oliver and Alexander.

I especially like iCab's Download Manager, which I reate as better than MSIE's, and starting with Preview 1.7, you will still be able to go to the iCab Website and download a current version if you keep the preview until it expires. Very cool.

iCab version 1.7 will work until the end of December, but there may be another preview version released before that date. The final version, which will sell for the shareware-esque price of $29 for it, is expected to be ready around the turn of the year, although a free "lite" version will continue to be available as well.

It only takes a few minutes to download the iCab preview (about 940k), and each new version accesses preferences and the "Hotlist" (ie: Bookmarks) from the previous version, so there is no configuration hassle upgrading from version to version. However, it is probably wise to trash the preferences from previous builds of iCab and start afresh anyway (make sure to save your Hotlist.html file from the preferences first if you want to retain your URL database). iCab also gives you the option on first startup of assimilating either Favorites from MSIE or Bookmarks from Netscape for its "Hotlist" menu. However you can also make a copy of your Favorites file from MSIE, rename it "Hotlist.html" and drag it into the iCab preferences folder. This does not work with Netscape bookmarks.

For questions concerning iCab, bugreports and suggestions: support@icab.de .

For general questions concerning the concept, marketing etc: info@icab.de .

You can download a free evaluation copy of iCab preview 1.7 here.

Appendix:

New Features in iCab Preview 1.7

* It's now possible to configure the contextual menu of the browser window (Preferences dialog, section "contextual menu"). You can switch all menu entries that you never use.

* When copying selected text to the clipboard or if the text is dragged into another application (Editor, Finder etc.) all the text style information (fonts, font effects, font size) is now also copied.

* New "cookie" option in preferences dialog. It's now possible to automatically accept all cookies which are only valid until the end of the session.

* Drag&Drop; modified and extended. There are now the following variations available:

without modifiers:

Dragging of text and images (for images the Alt key were used in previous versions). Even if the text is part of a link it can be now dragged without modifiers.

with ALT key:

Dragging of links. The file is downloaded into the destination folder.

with Command key:

Dragging of links. Only the URL is copied to the destination (this was done without modifiers in previous versions).

Single clicks are handled the following ways:

without modifiers:

Open link or unselect text.

with Shift key:

Extend text selection

with Command key:

Open link in new window.

width Command + Shift:

Open link in new window, the window opens in the background.

with ALT key:

Download the link (the Download dialog will open)

* In preferences dialog there's a new panel "Filter Java Applets". iCab is now able to filter out Java-Applets neary the same way it does for images. To add a new filter you can do it simply by command-clicking on the Java-Applet and choosing "Java/Filter" in the contextual menu (like you can do this for images). You can edit the filters later in the preferences dialog too. The contextual menu has also some new entries to start/restart an applet later (for example if it was filtered out).

* After iCab has expired it is now possible to load the iCab homepage, so it is possible to download a new release using iCab itself. No need to use NC or IE.

* In the help menu there's a new entry "iCab update available?". Using this menu entry iCab will check if a new version of iCab is available. If one is available iCab offers to download it. It's possible to configure iCab so that it automatically checks for an update (the menu entry is checked). iCab looks max. once per day for an update in this setting. It's also possible to configure iCab so that it only checks for an update after the user selects this menu (the menu entry is unchecked).

* iCab supports the Netscape HTML extension "POINT-SIZE" in the FONT tag.

* iCab introduces web archives. The iCab archives are in ZIP format which can be decoded on all platforms without any problem. These web archives can be displayed by iCab like HTML files, and of course iCab is able to create these archives. These archives can contain any number of HTML files, images, fonts etc. iCab will compress the files so using web archives to save web pages will be very efficient. If you open a web archive iCab will display the first file found in the archive. If you follow a link form this page, iCab will first look in the archive. If the link is found in the archive, iCab will load the new page from the archive too. If it's not in the archive iCab uses the usual way to get the file (get the file from the web cache, the internet or the harddisk).

Note: If you display the source of a HTML file which is loaded from a web archive iCab itself will display the source. It's not possible to pass the source to an editor, because the source is only available compressed in the web archive.

* The "Save File" dialog has some new options to select the format in which the HTML page can be saved.

Text

Only the pure text of the page is saved (no HTML code)

HTML

The HTML code of the page is saved (no images)

Web archive

The current page with all its images, fonts, frames is saved in one file (web archive)

* It's now possible to download whole web sites into web archives.

* When downloading web sites into the download folder iCab no longer changes the filenames. Instead it recontructes the original directory hierarchy of the server.

* "Downloading" of local web sites ("file://...") is now possible too.

* Downloads into the download folder no longer go through the web cache.

* Dragging links with the ALT key into the finder will download the linked file.

* Some new options in the download dialog. It's now possible to prevent the postprocessing the files after download using the settings of "Internet" control panel. It's also possible to let iCab automatically remove the entries in the download manager after the download has finished successfully. The deafults for both settings can be set in the preferences dialog.

* The desktop folder can be now used as download folder.

* "BCC" header can be set in email window.

* Bitstream's "Dynamic Fonts" (TrueDoc technology) are now supported. You'll find some examples at

* The iCab icons can now easily replaced by anyone. All you need is a file named "iCab Icons" (type 'MCIC', creator 'iCAB') in the iCab folder which contains all the icons that should be replaced. iCab will first look in the file "iCab Icons" for the icons and if it doesn't find it there it will use the default one.

* iCab attaches some "pieces of paper" to the mouse cursor when you move the mouse over a link that opens a new window. The same happens if you hold down the Cammand key because Command-click will also open the link in a new window.

* Shift-Tab steps the cursor backwards through the input field of HTML forms.

* iCab now supports the wildcards "*" and "?" in the "noproxy" entries of the Internet control panel.

* In Kiosk mode it is now possible to use the wildcards "?" and "*" to configure the allowed web sites. ("http://www.xyz.com/path/" is equivalent to "http://www.xyz.com/path/*").

* In the contextual menu of the browser window there's now a new menu entry "Check syntax with W3C validator" available in the "page" and "frame" submenu. Using this option will pass the URL of the page or frame to the W3C validator and shows the results.

* In preferences dialog (section: Network/Connections) it is now possible to set the maximum number of connections that will be used by the download manager at the same time. This will prevent that 10 or more MP3 files ;-)) will be downloaded at the same time which would slow down all downloads far too much.

* If the extension "Text-To-Speech" is installed iCab is now able to read the web pages aloud. Using the menu "View/Speak" iCab will read all the frames, using the contextual menu "Frame/Speak" of the browser only a single frame will be read. After selecting some text iCab can also read the selected text (select "Speak selection" in the contextual menu). iCab will read the alternative text of images. It will also read the table "summary" if defined. The attribute "summary" is new in HTML 4.0.

* iCab now supports the HTML attribute "ACCESSKEY". "ACCESSKEY" defines a character which when pressed selects, activates or focuses the object (images, links, controls). The key that can be pressed to activate the object will be displayed like "" after the object.

* Cursor-left/right scrolls left/right.

* Cmd-Cursor Up/Down scrolls a page up/down.

Bugfixes in iCab Preview 1.7

* Now, if "auto complete URL" is switched off iCab doesn't try to create a minimal valid URL any longer if the entered URL is not valid and not complete. This way Open Transport or MacTCP is able to do the completion using the "search domains" itself.

* iCab now reports an error if the tag < LEGEND> was missing or at the wrong position.

* The iCab email-window could not send emails without content.

* In Download manager the "Max transfer size" was not correctly evaluated.

* iCab now respects the < BASE TARGET="target"> when displaying the result of an HTML form.

* After changing the fontsize twice using the buttons in the toolbar the buttons in the LINK toolbar were disabled.

* If the server sets the Content-Type to "multipart/*" but does not send the content in multipart format, iCab was slowed down very much.

* iCab is now able to accept shortcuts like Cmd-+ or Cmd-. on all keyboard layouts. Old versions of iCab failed to recognize these shortcuts if there must be also pressed the Shift key.

* If iCab scrolls while selecting table entries (Hotlist/History/Download manager) all the entries that scrolls out of the visible area were deselected.

* iCab checks if the font settings are really correct. So if someone does install a new font for another language (for example Japanese on a German system), iCab will recognize that the old setting for this language (for example Chicago) is no longer correct because now a suitable font is available (for example "Osaka"). iCab will now use the new font automatically.

* The order of the destination encodings/fonts for the Text Encoding Converter modified. Now the Symbol font has a higher priority than the Greek font. This way greek letters will also work if no Greek Fonts are available because most Greek letters are also part of the Symbol font.

* In Offline mode iCab no longer starts Java Applets if the Applet is not located on the harddisk.

* The auto fill feature in HTML forms is deactivated for all input fields with only one visible character.

* If iCab was configured to not handle certain protocols itself iCab did call the application which is configured in the Internet control panel for this protocol. But if in the Internet control panel iCab was set for these protocols, both iCab and the Internet control panel did pass the URL to each other for ever. Now iCab checks which application is configured in "Internet" to prevent this kind of loop.

* Without the Appearance manager selecting the option "ignore colors of HTML file" in printing dialog did crash.

* HTTP redirections from http-URLs to https-URLs didn't work.

* In redirections from http to ftp iCab does now call the external ftp application if iCab is configured to use an external ftp application.

* When starting iCab by dragging an URL file onto the iCab icon, iCab reported an error -192 for nearly everything that's done afterwards.

* A problem with HTML based redirections solved. Now, "hotmail.com" should work with iCab.

* Bug in handling GetURL and OpenURL events fixed. Sometimes iCab forgot to send the response.

* Under Icelandic MacOS iCab will no longer try to translate the characters < THORN> etc. with the Text Encoding Converter. It will now use the characters from the system font.

* In the Hotlist, History and in the download manager long texts will be now truncated in the middle and no longer at the end. So in URLs the filename should be always visible.

* False use of the tag < TBODY> could crash iCab.

* input field will now scroll automatically while selecting text and when positioning the mouse cursor above/below the input field. Charles W. Moore      .