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The iCab folks have addressed an issue with Web archives introduced with the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update, as wella s adding some improvements for the bookmarks (labels), several new "experimental" settings, and some bugfixes and improvements.
Additions and enhancements in recent iCab 4.5 betas include Labels for bookmarks in the bookmarks window, and aew JavaScript filter setting for disallowing JavaScript to "kidnap" Cmd-Clicks. Thre are also some bugfixes and improvements. Note that iCab beta releases are only available to registered users.
Changes in Beta 77 :
- Under MacOS 10.5.7 loading iCab Web Archives (ZIP) did no longer work. The reason is a new issue in the "NSURLCache" class of Cocoa (which was already buggy since 10.5.0). iCab now uses a totally difference approach to load iCab WebArchives. Instead of using the Cache to pass the data from the archives to WebKit, iCab now converts the iCab archives into Safari archives and passes these to WebKit. This works fine for simple iCab archives which only contains a single web page. iCab archives which contain more than one web page (the Safari archives do not support multiple pages in a single archive) may be slower than before with this new approach.
- When you edit/modify the forms data in the Forms manager in the panel "special web sites", you can now use the special string "~@~" (without the quotes) for text fields, which should not be modified by iCab when filling out the forms. This is useful for web sites where certain text fields are already filled out with the current date, for example. If you set the value for these fields to "~@~", the date is no longer overwritten.
- It's now possible to open Bookmarks folders as window directly from within the bookmarks menu. Just select the menu item of a folder while holding down the Shift, Control, Alt or Command keyt.
- In case a browser plugin opens a fullscreen window (like Flash on YouTube) and closes this window later, iCab could have mixed up the keyboard shortcuts for closing Tabs and closing windows. This happens because iCab is notified about the opening of the Flash window, but not about the closing of this window. Now iCab tries to find out if a window was opened by a plugin and then ignores this message.
- The color labels for the bookmarks are now also visible in the bookmarks menu and in the favorites toolbar. The colors in the favorites toolbar can be switched off in the experimental settings.
- In the experimental settings it's not possible to disallow JavaScript code to open the print dialog.
- In the experimental settings there's a new setting to change the order in which Tab will be activated when the currently active Tab is closed. By default the Tab to the right of the currently active Tabs becomes active. The new setting allows to select the previously active Tab when closing the currently active Tab.
- In the experimental settings there's a new setting which alles to add the final URL from a HTTP redirection into the history instead of the original URL (which is what WebKit is doing by default).
- In the TopTen Overview modified web pages will be marked with a green star (in case the server sends the required data like the modification date)
- Filling out forms failed if the name of a form field contained a string like "[xyz]".
iCab's Download Manager got some tweaks in the Beta 72/Version 4.5 final build, which are appreciated, but unfortunately iCab's Download Manager still doesn't come close to matching Opera's for slickness, convenience, speed, or reliability. I found that while the iCab DLM will resume a paused download (the control labeling could be clearer on these functions, it seemed to have great difficulty in restoring download speeds above a crawl (relatively speaking - I'm on dialup and all download speeds are slow, but iCab's resumed speeds were measured in days for a 25 MB file. By contrast I initiated a download of the same file at the same time in Opera, and was getting a 2 1/2 hours-ish DL time, which is excellent for that size file on my setup. Still plenty of room for improvement of this feature.
Of course there's all the returning iCab good stuff. One thing I love about iCab 4.x builds is that it's lightning starting up - maybe not quite as fast as Safari 4 but pretty speedy. Another is that while I've always liked iCab, going back to experimenting with a German-language version back in the late '90s, it's never been more likeable than it is with these Version Apple WebKit-based 4.2.5 versions.
iCab is a niche player in the browser world, with less than one percent of the market, but it deserves a wider clientele on merit, and reminds me of long-running ad campaign for a brand of beer here in Atlantic Canada, which claims that "people who like it like it a lot." The same goes for iCab's fiercely loyal cohort of fans, and they have a point. There is an awful lot to like about iCab, which I consider the Mercedes Benz of browsers. It may not be the most potent powerhouse on the Information Highway, but it's a tour-de-force of solid and innovative engineering with a quiality feel.
One new feature in recent builds of iCab is the Cache Browser that is now available in the Tools menu if you're runnign MacOSX 10.5 and later. Under Mac OS X 10.3/10.4 the Cache browser is not available because the format of the cache files is unknown under these MacOS versions. The Cache Browser window displays a list of all files that are stored in the web cache, and it's possible to filter out certain items by activating/deactivating the file type buttons or by entering some text. There's also a preview available for all files. Through the contextual menu it's also possible to save the files to disk. Very cool, especially for folks like me who spend a lot of time working offline and are stuck with a slow dialup connection..
Another very cool and handy new feature recently added to iCab is the ability to save Web pages as PDF files.
If you've never checked out iCab, or it's been a while since you did, give this little browser a look. You may get hooked. The only caveat is that while iCab has pledged from the outset that a free version would always be available, Now that Omni Group has made their OmniWeb browser freeware, iCab is the last OS X browser that requires a software license fee for full support. A single user license of "iCab Pro" costs $25 / 25 EUR. Entering this code in iCab will switch off the "shareware reminder" box. At the moment, the only restriction of the free version is that pesky little "shareware reminder" box popping up from time to time, but I assure you it is annoying. Also users who have paid for a license are able to get newer (beta) releases of iCab like beta 75 earlier than other users who have to wait for final releases.
System requirements for iCab 4.x:
MacOSX 10.3.9 and newer,
MacOSX 10.4.x or 10.5.x is recommended.
System Support:
PPC/Intel
$25 Shareware/Freeware (NagWare)
For more information, visit:
http://www.icab.de/
Charles W. Moore
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