Cool Mac Gear

I’ve been using iCab as my main browser since 1998, and have gone through every consumer beta release since the days when iCab was available in German only, as well as literally dozens of non-public beta builds.

Developed by Alexander Clauss and the iCab Company, a small, private software development firm founded by Oliver Joppisch, 34, and based in Braunschweig, Germany. iCab is currently available as a public beta.

I particularly like the way iCab handles bookmarks (“Hotlist”) and history, and its forgiving flexibility and configurability, as well as its amazing compactness (just 2.3 MB download and 4 MB for the application file size) and low memory demands.

Oliver Joppisch has noted that the motivating factor for iCab development was that both Netscape (pre Mozilla) and Internet Explorer were based on older programming concepts and evolutionary development, and are thus very bulky. He noted that Internet Explorer for the Mac is quite attractive, but it still seems excessive. iCab is intended to be a "slim," fast, smooth browser.

In happy contrast to Explorer, iCab does not dump a ton of shared libraries and other junk into your System folder -- just a modest Preferences folder.

Speaking of Preferences, iCab has a comprehensive range of preference settings, and is as configurable as Netscape and IE -- in some respects more so. I especially like iCab's Download Manager. It only takes a few minutes to download the iCab beta, 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 once in a while (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 just make a copy of your Favorites file from MSIE, rename it "Hotlist.html" and drag it into the iCab preferences folder.

Version 2.8, released this week, is the most comprehensive upgrade of this fast, stable, reliable browser yet.
 
The development of iCab is still not and some features of the final version are missing, notably full JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 (CSS2) support. But don’t let that deter your from trying it. iCab is one of the most stable and quick browsers available for the Mac, and supports Macs from old 68k models through the latest G4s running OS X.

iCab Features:
• HTML 4.0 support
• Tag recognition for specific Netscape and Microsoft HTML enhancements.
• Flexible image filtering (for example banners)
• Flexible cookie filtering
• iCab can “bookmark” individual frames outside of their parent window
• iCab can generate an error report indicating syntax mistakes in the HTML source. This feature is especially interesting for those individuals who design their own web pages.
• iCab can automatically reload web pages as soon as they are edited in a separate application. This eliminates the need to constantly switch to a browser to see the results in an edited web page.
• Auto-complete URLs in the address field
• Display Java-Applets with the help of Apples MRJ 2.0 or better.
• iCab can search through HTML files on your local hard drive or cache
• A special search mode can display the “C’t-Rom” CDs by Heise-Verlag
• Multiple search engines are available directly from the internet search option in iCab
• Import web archives (and cache) from Internet Explorers 4.X
• Download Manager
• Hotlist (Bookmarks), History
• MacOS 8.5 Appearance savvy
• Support for Navigation-Services, Contextual menus and proportional scrolling (MacOS 8.5)
• Creation of Web-Archives in the platform-independent ZIP-Format (for the Download of complete web sites)
• Java Script

Major New Features In Version 2.8

• New Icons under Mac OS X

The Crystal icons are the new default icons under Mac OS X.

Another build-in icon set are the Blueberry icons.

You can also choose among other alternative icons sets which can be downloaded from the iCab home page.

• Java under Mac OS X
Java is now also supported under Mac OS X. Java can be enabled or disabled in the iCab Preferences dialog.

• Support for the mouse wheel under Mac OS X
iCab supports the mouse wheel under Mac OS X. In the iCab Preferences under Operation > Browser you can configure the scrolling speed when using the mouse wheel.

If USB Overdrive for MacOSX is installed, the scrolling speed is even faster if you move the wheel faster. This is also supported by iCab, but you may which to set a lower scrolling speed in the iCab preferences in this case to make this feature work much better.

Mac OS X itself doesn’t evaluate the speed when moving the mouse wheel, so without USB Overdrive installed you may which to configure a higher scrolling speed in the iCab preferences.

• Tools Menu
Several features of iCab are now accessible through the Tools menu. There are also some new features like the Filter Manager and the Cookie Manager.

Cookie Manager
The Cookie Manager lists all cookies and can be used to sort, reorder and delete cookies and to inspect all the cookie details.

Link Manager
The link manager is a window with two parts. On the left side of the link all links of a web site will be listed. Opening one of these links will load the page on the right side of the window.

Download Manager
The Download Manager is used to manage downloads of files or whole web sites.

Filter Manager
The Filter Manager does allow to filter out certain images (like advertising banners), Java applets, Plugins content and JavaScript code. It can be also used to define certain configurations for web pages, to set all those preferences which may need a special setting. For example some web pages do block browsers which are not recognized as Netscape or Internet Explorer. With the filter manager you can make sure that iCab will identify itself as Internet Exploerer on these sites, but will still identify itself as “iCab” on all other sites.

Error Report
The error report lists all errors in the HTML code of the current web page. This feature is especially useful for web designers.

Script Debugger
The Script Debugger can be used to debug JavaScript code. This feature is especially useful for web designers.

Console
All error messages and status messages of Java applets and JavaScript code will be displayed in the Console.

Kiosk Mode
The kiosk mode is a special mode for kiosk environments where the Mac is located at a public location (for example a hotel lobby, an exhibition etc.) and therefore some kind of protection is necessary.

Cookie Manager
The Cookie Manager (in the Tools menu) lists all cookies which were accepted. Cookies which are used by iCab (which means that they are send back to the server when accessing the web page) are checked. If you remove the checkmark icab will no longer use this cookie.

• Filter Manager
In the Tools menu there is now a new item Filter Manager. With the help of the Filter Manager you can define and manage URL-specific sets of preferences. The filter manager includes the old image and javascript filters but also many other preferences. A set of URL specific preferences can be bundled into a configuration. A configuration can be imported and exported. This makes it easy to offer special preferences for certain web pages which require special browser settings without affecting other pages. We will offer special configurations for important web pages on our web page.

The Filter Manager has two modes. A simple mode and an extended mode.

Simple mode

By default iCab uses the simple mode. The simple mode doesn’t allow changes to configurations. It is only possible to import, export and delete predefined configurations. It is also possible to change the order of the configurations (important ones should come first). To bottom part of the filter manager window will show some informations about the configuration.

The toolbar contains several buttons:

- Import imports a configuration file with site-specific settings
- Export exports a configuration into a file
- Delete deletes a configuration
- Download opens a Web page where the user can download some predefined configuration files

Extended Mode

The extended mode allows to create new configurations or to modify existing ones. The window will show three lists. The left one contains all configurations. Selecting a configuration will activate the list in the middle which then contains a list of preference sets that can be configured. Selecting one of the preference set items will activate the last list to the right which contains the URL filters for the selected configuration and preferences. The bottom part of the window contains informations about the configuration or the preferences itself.

• File page in Hotlist
With the menu item File current page of the Hotlist menu you can add the current page to the hotlist, and you can directly choose a folder of the hotlist where the new bookmark is created. You can also change the URL and title for the new bookmark. You can add a comment as well.

To file the page into the root of the Hotlist, click on the Root of the Hotlist button, otherwise select a folder from the folder list.

• Underline links
It is now possible to configre iCab to always underline links, to never underline links or to let the web page decide if links will be underlined.

The default is to underline links so that they can be easily recognized as links. Some web designers do not like this. They think that underlined links don’t fit to the design of their web page and therefore they try to disable the underline of links. Especially some non-experienced users may have problems recognizing the links in this case.

With the new setting, the user has now a better control how the links should be displayed and if web pages are allowed to change the underlining.

• Configuring the list view of Hotlist, History, Download Manager and Cookie Manager

iCab uses a list view to display the content of the Hotlist, History, Download Manager and Cookie Manager. The list view can be configured in many ways.

You can reorder all the entries via Drag & Drop (with the exception of the History, which is always sorted chronological). Click (or Alt-Click, depending of the iCab preferences) on the list column headers to sort the entries alphabetically.

Using the contextual menu (Control-Click on the list column headers) you can hide columns or you can switch them on again (see the image below). The exception is the very first column, which can’t be hidden (similar to the finder where the column with the file name is also visible all the time).

You can change the widths of the columns by moving the edges of the column headers with the mouse.

The order of the columns can be also changed by dragging a column header to the new position. The only exception is the very first column which will always remain on the first position (similar to the finder where the first column with the file name will also remain at the first position).

iCab 2.8 System Requirements:
• Minimum 4MB available RAM
• System 7.5 or newer
• System 7.0.1 or newer if you also install the ThreadManager and the DragManager
• MacTCP or Open Transport
• InternetConfig 1.2 or newer (or Mac OS 8.5 or later)

The following components are also recommended:
• For Java support in iCab, you must have Apple’s Mac OS Runtime for Java, version 2.1 (2.2 is recommended).
• QuickTime (preferably 4.x) allows the ability to control tone and music output, view QT Movies, and many other file formats.

After the first final release, iCab will offer “iCab Pro” for $29. You will also be able to download a “lite” version for free.

For more information, visit:
http://www.icab.de/download.html

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear