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In the meantime, the iCab Folks say iCab 2.9.7, which was released Monday, is a pure bugfix release. There're no new features, but some bugfixes and some adaptions for MacOSX 10.3 "Panther".
• iCab 2.9.7 again includes a new version of the OpenSSL library which fixes some security issues of previous versions of this library.
• This release fixes a security issue with certain (self-signed unknown) certifiates where iCab didn't show a warning.
• Some "cosmetic" issues with the new MacOSX 10.3 "Panther" solved.
• Also includes several workarounds for some new bugs of MacOSX 10.3 "Panther".
• A new version of the application MisFox is now included in the MacOSX archive of iCab (in the archive for MacOSX 10.2.x and 10.3.x). MisFox allows to change many Internet settings of the system for which Apple itself doesn't provide any user interface anymore (though almost all internet applications do rely on these settings).
However, bigger things are on the way. The iCab developers note:
"The next, larger update (iCab 3.0) will include a much better implementation of CSS. Many web pages which require certain CSS features which are currently not implemented, will look much better in 3.0. New CSS implementation requires many internal changes and modifications. Parts of these changes are already finished in iCab 2.9 (even if these are not visible, other than the increased speed of iCab), other parts still need to be implemented, and will be in iCab 3.0.
"These internal modifications are very complex, and because the iCab team is very small (1 - 1.5 people, doing all the programming, e-mail support and everything else) you could get the impression that the development 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). Development is difficult work, though not always visible. But the next (iCab 3.0) release will have many new features (like much better CSS support) which are quite visible, and which will make iCab much more compatible with most web pages again.
"We appreciate your patience, and assure you the next release will have profound (and visible) improvements, features and modifications."
Here at Applelinks we appreciate your patience as well. iCab is one of my own favorite browsers, and I look forward to iCab 3.0.
MisFox
If you're running OS X 10.3, there's a great reason for downloading iCab 2.9.7 that has nothing to do with new browser feathere. Included with the download is a cool little helper application called MisFox.
The application is only useful for MacOSX. Under MacOSX several Internet settings which were available under MacOS 8 and 9 are still present and are still used by most Internet applications, but they are no longer accessible by the user. In MacOSX 10.3 Apple has removed the settings for the default Browser and the default Mail application from the System Preferences. If these settings get corrupted for some reason there's no easy way to repair them anymore. 'MisFox' makes some of the most important Internet settings accessible again.
MisFox will show the "default internet applications", all the "file mappings" settings and the "protocol helpers". You can inspect these settings and also edit, delete and create new items for these settings.
The "Default Applications" will define which application will be launched if an URL of a certain kind will be opened. For example when opening a "mailto" URL in the finder or if you click a "mailto" link in the web browser, the default email application is launched so it can handle this URL.
The "File Mappings" are used for many tasks. First they will translate the "content-type" and file extensions which are used in the Internet into the file type and creator codes which are used on the Mac. Second they do define what to do with files of a certain file type after they are downloaded from the internet (for example they define that ".sit" files should be processed by Stuffit Expander).
"Protocol Helpers" are used to find the right application to handle certain internet protocols. So a web browser will use the protcol helper settings to find a news reader when clicking on a "news:" link in order to open this link.
Version History - 05.11.2003: V1.2
- It's now also possible to select the "Finder" as helper application (byselecting the Finder application file located at "/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder"
- It's now possible to select more than one item so you can delete multiple items at once (usually only necessary if the internet settings contain a large number of broken entries).
- Increased the stack size to prevent crashes because of broken internet preferences with thousands of invalid entries.
- New settings panel "Default Applications" added which allows to easily select the most important default internet applications (Web Browser, Mail, News and FTP). Even these settings could be also modified in the "Protocol Helpers" panel, the new panel should be much easier to use for the normal user.
iCab 2.9.7 ystem requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.1 or higher
or
• System 7.0.1 or higher
iCab is public preview freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.icab.de/dl.php
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