Cool Mac Gear

With all the hype and excitement over Apple’s new Safari browser, we shouldn’t forget that development continues (hopefully) on other Mac OS browsers. Yesterday, iCab released their 2.9 beta build, and some preview info on the upcoming iCab 3.

I’m an unabashed iCab fan. While I’ve been smitten by the speed and tabbed browsing of the Mozilla/Chimera/Netscape troika, and Safari is looking very good, iCab is still the browser I turn to most to get my donkey-work done -- article posting, software downloads, and so on. I like its download manager better than any other browser’s, ditto for its bookmark and history management, and it will post TypeIt4Me macros in the Applelinks CGI posting forms with upper case intact, which the Mozilla browsers won’t. When you highlight a URL in the address field to copy it, you don.t have to first un-highlight selected text in the Web page window, and pages saved as text display their proper titles.

Because of these reasons and more, for this type of utilitarian Web work, iCab stands head and shoulders above any other browser. It may not be the fastest in raw download speeds (although it’s no slouch), but the convenience of using it makes up for that and more.

iCab is also the only browser available that offers versions for OS X, Mac OS PPC Classic, and Mac OS 68k Classic. It is the only up to date browser that supports 68k Macs.

iCab is stil a beta, albeit a highly refined one, and some features of the final version are missing. After the first final release, iCab will offer “iCab Pro” for $29. You will also be able to download a version for free.
 
The next major update will be iCab 3.0. This release will include much better CSS support and much better integration of Mac OS X. The better CSS support will require larger internal changes in iCab. Parts of these changes are already part of iCab 2.9 even if these are not directly visible and iCab 2.9 is now faster, as my daily use of several iCab 2.9 non-public beta builds over the past couple of months confirms.

These internal modifications are very complex and because the iCab team is very small (1 - 1,5 people, doing all the programming and also the email support and everything else) you could get the impresssion that the developement of iCab was very slow in the past (especially if most parts of the changes were just internal modifications and not visible like new features) even if the developement is really hard work. But the next release (iCab 3.0) will have many new features (like better CSS support) which will be clearly visible and which will make iCab much more compatible with most webpages again.

However, it’s a pretty fine browser now.

New in iCab 2.9:
• Many internal changes, many parts of iCab rewritten (new cache management and other internal changes). because of this iCab is now much faster.
• New search features. You can now easily call any search engine from within the URL input field
• Some fixes, workarounds and new features for MacOSX 10.2 (Jaguar)
• It is now possible to define key shortcuts for all search engines which are configured in the “iCab preferences > Searches > Internet Sites”. The key shortcut is one letter (upper/lower case does matter) that can be entered in the location field of the browser window to search something with this search engine.This works the following way: First enter the key shortcut, followed by a space character and followed by the search keywords. For example if you’ve configured the letter “g” for google.com you can enter “g iCab” in the location field to search for iCab using the search engine google.com.
• Because of a bug in MacOSX 10.2.x parts of the text does overlap when printing web pages. A workaround will avoid this new bug of the MacOSX.
• The Reload button does only reload files which have changed on the server. Only if you hold down the SHIFT key while clicking the Reload button, all files will be loaded from the web, regardless if they have changed or if they have not changed.
• The Web Cache and the image cache (and some other components) were completely replaced by new routines. Because of this iCab is now much faster (depending of the page).

System Requirements
• Minimum 5MB free RAM
• System 7.0.1 or 7.1, if ThreadManager and DragManager are also installed
• System 7.5 or newer (including Mac OS X)
• MacTCP or OpenTransport
• InternetConfig 1.2 (or Mac OS 8.5 or newer)
• G4, G3, PPC, 68020, 68030 or 68040

For more information or to download iCab:
http://www.icab.de/dl.php

Charles W. Moore