Other Sites
iCab is a Mac port of the pre-existing and successful Atari ST Web browser, "Cab," developed by German programmer Alexander Clauss. Cab was written in Pascal, but the Mac port of iCab was coded entirely in CodeWarrior C. It has been essentially a labor of love for Clauss and co-developer Oliver Joppisch.
iCab 1.x was extremely small at just 2 MB - smaller even than the old Netscape Navigator 2.02, and it operated happily in a - get this - 1,280 kb memory partition (1,400 MB preferred) if Virtual Memory or RAMDoubler (remember it, anyone?) was turned on. This made it especially well worth looking into if you had an older, slower Mac with a small hard drive and limited RAM upgrade potential.
It was also plenty speedy, definitely competitive with the contemporaneous 4.5 versions of Internet Explorer and Communicator, and faster in some instances. It breezed through cached pages almost instantly, and was lightning with the pictures turned off.
The iCab interface was clean and uncluttered, and in place of IE's and Netscape's somewhat pretentious animated logos at the upper right of the browser window, iCab featured a little animated cartoon car (cab) driving through the window blowing puffs of cartoon smoke. A nice, light-hearted, self-effacing touch.
iCab Preview 2.x came along in 2000, with some new features and refined returning ones like a persistent History, the ability to download web pages as complete archives with images or sounds embedded, the ability to autocomplete URLs and forms, cache surfing, convenient Hotlist (bookmark) editing, and a great Download Manager, but still lacking lacking CSS, complete Javascript implementation and 128-bit encryption for online banking, Version 2 was probably the most competitive version of iCab so far, and still able to compete with the big-name browsers and beat them in many aspects. It was also the only browser remaining in active development that still offered a 68k version, making it beloved of LOw End Mac users.
iCab 3 finally arrived in 2005, carrying on the OS X support that had debuted with the later version 2 iterations, and there was still a Mac OS Classic version for OS 8.5 and later - by then the only browser left still being developed for the Classic Mac OS, but the 68k version was no longer. iCab 3 had vastly improved CSS rendering, and was one of the first browsers to support tabbed browsing, with configuration customizability and flexibility second to none.
Unfortunately, it has also begun to severely lag behind the new wave of OS X browsers performance-wise, and indeed was now one of the slowest if not the slowest browser in the pack.
Visually, iCab 3.0 looked identical to version 2.9.8, with some complaining that the iCab user interface looked antiquated, They had a point in respect of the OS 9 version, but I was rather fond of the "Crystal" theme of OS X iCab.
However, I never really found myself satisfied enough with iCab 3.0's performance to use it much. I found it buggy, and unable to support too many Websites, and the raw speed of browsers like Opera and the Mozilla Gecko family proved irresistible.
iCab 3.0.3, released in August, 2006, is still the current shipping version, now also available as a Universal Binary which runs natively on new Intel Macs. It has some good qualities - it starts up almost instantly, even faster than Safari, and has one of the best - if not THE best - and most configurable Preferences interfaces in the business. On the downside, iCab is now really lagging the competition in terms of speed optimization, and I'm obliged to report that it's the slowest browser I've tried out recently, and by a significant margin. I've been spoiled by the speed of Opera and Netscape 9. iCab 3.0.3 really struggles with some of the Websites I visit regularly, not only loading slowly, but not rendering all of the content. However, users of older MacOS versions (MacOSX 10.1.5 and later and for Macs width G3 processors and of course for "Classic" MacOS 8.5-9.2.2) can still get a version of iCab which runs on their system.
After a decade in development, iCab is still a beta, but development continues. A reader, who requests anonymity wrote last week to say:
"iCab has been updated to version 4. This is a complete Cocoa rewrite. I have been using it for about two weeks now using on a G4 MDD and OSX 10.3.9 and am very pleased. It is noticeably faster and rendering is much better on the sites I frequent. I have no problems using it as my default browser. It's feature set is very comprehensive as you are well aware. It is only available for paid users at the moment. "It showed up when I checked for software updates in iCab itself. It is a "beta" version albeit a very good one. It is therefore only available if you are using a paid version of iCab (I believe). It only works on 10.3.9 or later but is head and shoulders above any previous version IMHO.
Yes indeed. While iCab has pledged from the outset that a free version would always be available, it remains one of the last two browsers (OmniWeb is the other) that requires a software fee for full support. Consequently, you won't find iCab 4 on the iCab Website yet.
MY reader correspondent continues:
"The minimum requirements are 10.3.9. Tiger and Leopard are recommended. The 'Read me' file (see Appendix below) explains some of the features and changes. While one could easily argue that with so many excellent free browsers for OS X why pay $30. my reason was to support a guy who is basically developing a browser by himself and yet still finds time to support the older classic OS'es. With the release of iCab 4 I can truly say that the $30 was money well spent."
A commendable attitude, and I'm sure Mssrs. Clauss and Joppisch appreciate the support, but I expect its a tough sell to the masses. I wish the developers well, and hope a public release of the iCab 4 beta is available soon so I can check it out first hand. Thanks to my reader friend for the hands-on report.
For more information about iCab or to download available versions, visit:
http://www.icab.de/
Appendix
iCab 4.0.0 Beta Read Me
This is the first version of iCab based on Cocoa. In general the new version works just like the old version, but there are also many differences. The User interface of iCab 4 matches much better the MacOSX look and feel than before. Also the settings are cleaned up, so some old settings were removed, some new were added. The filter manager has a completely new structure.
System requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer required, some details require Mac OSX 10.4 or 10.5.
- iCab 4 is Universal Binary, so it runs natively on PPC and Intel Macs.
What's not available yet:
- The Cache Browser of iCab 3 is not available in iCab 4 because of some limitations of the Cocoa Cache system.
- Currently, iCab 4 has only English and German resources.
Important Changes:
- iCab 4 uses the Cocoa file formats where ever this is possible. Therefore some files from iCab 2/3 can not be used in iCab 4 anymore. iCab 4 automatically imports the Hotlist of older iCab releases, but saves the bookmarks in a new Cocoa compatible file format afterwards. iCab 4 can load and save the old web Archive files and the "session" files. All other old files (Preferences, History, Cookies, Filters) can not be read by the new iCab 4, but in general this is not really necessary (the history or cookie data will be created automatically after some time, so loading the old data is not important here)
- iCab 4 can read/write Safari WebArchives and also iCab WebArchives. Certain features like creating Session archives will work only with iCab WebArchives because Safari Webarchives can only store one single page.
- When opening iCab WebArchives these archives will be used like a web cache for the tab or window. You can open any number of archives in a tab/window and all these archives will be used like a web cache. So when opening a web page, iCab will look first if the page can be found in one of the archives and loads it from there. An icon in the status bar displays if web archives are assigned to the tab/window. Clicking this icon you can remove the WebArchives from the window/tab again.
- When creating a Session Archive (File menu) iCab will save all data of all web pages which are loaded in the tab/window in a WebArchive. To indicate that a "recording" takes place, the Tab is displayed in a special color (if no Tab toolbar is visible, a colored line is displayed at the top of the window). The Archive can be opened later and you can revisit the pages later without the need to be online.
- Cocoa has its own global "Cookie Storage", which is used globally for all Cocoa web applications. So a cookie that is accepted in Safari can be accessed in iCab 4 or Shiira and all other Cocoa applications using this Cocoa Cookie storage. Having a global cookie storage can be positive (because all applications might share the same cookies) but it has also some negative aspects (deleting/rejecting cookies in one browser may not mean that you want to delete this cookie in other bowsers as well). Also the global Cookie storage of Cocoa has some limitations. Therefore iCab 4 can use its own private cookie storage but also the global one of Cocoa (the user can configure this). Some features (for increased security) do only work with iCab's private cookie storage, so using the private cookie storage is the default setting in iCab 4. In the Cookie manager you can access and edit both cookie storages.
- You can still create Logfiles where iCab logs all the HTTP headers received from web servers, but you can now also log the HTTP headers directly into the Console window, so the HTTP responses can be watched "live".
- The Filter Manager has changed in many ways, so the old filters from iCab 3 won't work anymore in iCab 4. In the iCab 4Beta archive you'll find two example filters: an advertising filter and a YouTube Video download filter. Just import these filter files from within the filter manager window to use these filters.
The usage of the filter manager is still very similar to the one of iCab 3: First select a filter collection/configuration, then a URL to change the settings for this URL.
- The DOM Inspector is a new feature, which is probably interesting for web authors. After selecting a source file of the web page you can inspect the HTML tree with all its nodes and attributes.
- The JavaScript Debugger works similar to the one in iCab 3. You can use the function "debug()" in JavaScript code to print out any values into the console or debugger window.
- To waste less space in the "Bookmarks" menu, several menu items share the same menu item. Hold down the ALT key while the menu is open to see the alternative menu items. The menu items "File current page" and "add current page" share the same menu item, also "File Tab group" and "add Tab group" share the same item. The "file XXX" items will open a new dialog box where you can directly select the destination folder in the bookmarks where the bookmark will be added. The "add XXX" items will just append the new bookmark at the very end of the bookmark items.
- The Find dialog is no longer modal and so it can be left open all the time. Searching in the internet can be done using the "search" field in the toolbar and even in the URL field (for example by entering "g keyword" to search for "keyword" at google).
- There's no longer a separate location toolbar available. The URL field is now placed in the standard toolbar together with all the other toolbar buttons. To save space in the toolbar there're now some combined buttons available with needs less space than the individual buttons (which are still available). Some of the buttons which could only be placed in the toolbar in iCab 3 (like the "Smiley" and and the "Busy wheel") can be now also placed in the status bar.
- It's now possible to add user-defined JavaScript code to each web page that is loaded. Adding a user-defined StyleSheet was already possible in iCab 3. While you can only modify the layout of the web page with user defined StyleSheets, you can modify the structure and code of the document with user-defined JavaScript. This is a very powerful feature, but it requires that you know HTML and JavaScript code very well. As an example of this feature, you'll find the "YouTube video download" filter for the filter manager in the archive of this iCab beta. This filter will add a link to each YouTube page which allows to download the video of the page. The filter contains a user-defined JavaScript code which adds this link into the YouTube web page.
Last words:
I'm interested if the default preferences of iCab 4 are OK or if some settings should have another default value. Are there any details in the GUI which should be changed. Does everything work as expected?
I'm looking forward for any feedback you can give about the new release
Charles W. Moore
Tags: Hot Topics ď News ď Reviews ď Web Reviews ď
