Cool Mac Gear

As I’ve noted here from time to time, iCab, Mozilla, and lately Netscape 7.0 are my main axes in the browser department -- at least when we’re talking full-featured browsers. However, I estimate that I do roughly half of my Web-surfing with WannaBe, David T. Pierson’s little text-only, web browser for PowerPC or 68k MacOS computers.

WannaBe is a must-have for anyone on a dial-up Internet connection who values their time. There are a few other text-only browsers available - - Lynx and Links for OS X notably, but they’re sort of Unixy and not especially user-friendly. WannaBe is a more Mac-like solution that downloads the text from Web pages in a fraction of the time it takes with even the fastest regular browsers, running in either the legacy Mac OS, or in Classic Mode under OS X.

David Pierson says that his aim in writing WannaBe was not to create a full-featured browser. He wanted a minimal browser that allowed him to read his favorite web pages each morning without gobbling up several megabytes of RAM (WannaBe requires 2M) and without wasting time waiting for tables to render. WannaBe is quite limited in that it doesn’t support images, tables, forms, bookmarks, cookies and several other standard browser features.

No pictures of course, but a lot of the time what I’m after is text content anyway. Pictures are represented as placekeeper “img.lnk” tags You can download images to view in Image Viewer,, Preview, or a graphics application by just clicking on the tags. If you need to view of the full page content or hit a page with frames (you can usually also get the text in frames with WannaBe) or graphics navigation, just select “Open this Page in” from WannaBe’s Go menu, and it will open in your choice of seven regular browsers listed.

You can also save Web pages Is as plain text or HTML Source. A Find command allows searching for text strings within a page. Web searches can be done only through plug-in files based on Apple’s Internet Search Interface Language (the same plug-ins used by Apple’s Sherlock application). WannaBe can handle standard downloads from Web Pages itself. All FTP links are passed to Internet Config. Simply change Internet Config’s settings for FTP to your favorite file transfer program or any other web browser (‘Helpers’). WannaBe can open ordinary plain text documents as well.

WannaBe’s user interface is very spartan to keep it lean and fast, so some features are not readily apparent. They include:
• command- will cancel any connection associated with the frontmost window. (Cancelling is necessary in order to close the window or quit.)
• tab will switch the selection between the URL box at the top of the window and the main text view below.
• command-L will select all the text in the URL box at the top of the window.
• return or enter when the URL box at the top of the window is active will open the URL contained there.
• command-clicking a link will open it in a new window.
• shift-clicking a link will copy its URL to the clipboard.
• option-click will save a linked-to file to disk.
• command-left arrow will go “back”.
• command-right arrow will go “forward”.
• option-command- will go “full back”.
• option-command- will go “full forward”.
• proxy support is enabled via Internet Config.

WannaBe doesn’t have a Bookmarks function of its own, but there are several potential workarounds. The one I use is to keep an alias of my iCab Hotlist file (in the iCab preferences folder) on the Desktop. When you drag the alias to WannaBe, it opens as a column of links, which when option-clicked takes you to the respective bookmarked Web pages.

I’ve been using WannaBe for several years, through many alpha builds and all 12 of the betas so far. I’ve found it extremely stable and trouble - free throughout, and recommended it without reservation. The only minor complaint I have is that WannaBe doesn’t support the F-key Cut, Copy, Paste shortcuts, from the URL line for instance.

WannaBe gets a full five-A Applelinks rating.

System Requirements:
WannaBe should run under MacOS 7.5 and later versions, and may also run under System 7.1 if the Drag Manager and Thread Manager are installed. It also requires Color Quickdraw, which is available on all PowerPC and 68k Macs except those with the original Motorola 68000 processor. WannaBe requires Internet Config 2.0 or later, which is available thru the WannaBe download page at .

WannaBe is freeware,

The latest version and information regarding WannaBe can be found at the WannaBe home page:
http://mindstory.com/wb2/

For my full review of WannaBe (nuch older alpha version), visit:
http://www.applelinks.com/mooresviews/wanna.shtml

Charles W. Moore