ICab

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The correct title of this article is iCab. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
iCab
The iCab Icon

iCab 3.0b382 under Mac OS X 10.4 showing the Wikipedia main page
Maintainer: Alexander Clauss
Stable release: 3.0.3  (August 18, 2006) [+/-]
Preview release: none  (n/a) [+/-]
OS: Mac OS 7.0.1-9.2.2, X
Use: Web browser
License: Proprietary, $29
Website: www.icab.de

iCab is a configurable web browser for the Macintosh by Alexander Clauss. In August 2006 its stable version (3.0.3) was released.


The following platforms are currently supported:


All of these are available for free download. However, some "Pro" features are available only for registered (paying) users. iCab is one of very few browsers being developed for Mac OS 9 and earlier OS versions, and is the only one available for 68k systems that features tabbed browsing. At the same time it's compatible with the latest hardware and system software.

iCab's proprietary rendering engine has often been criticised for not supporting CSS and DOM, making it hard to design modern Web pages for the browser. However, in May 2005 the first public beta of iCab 3 was released with dramatically updated layout capabilities (including CSS2 support), although this version is not available for 680x0-Macs. The iCab 3 series also has proper Unicode support, using ATSUI instead of the old WorldScript; this is the reason for iCab 3 requiring Mac OS 8.5 or later.

[edit] Features

One interesting feature of iCab is the iCab-Smiley. Depending on the validity of the HTML of the web site currently viewed, it will smile or look grim. Clicking on the smiley will bring up a list of any errors on the page, while shift-clicking it will activate an easter egg. This feature was first seen in the same author's earlier web browser, CAB, for Atari TOS compatible computers. CAB is an acronym standing for 'Crystal Atari Browser' and was one of the few browsers available on this platform. iCab also boasts the following features:

  • tabbed browsing
  • JavaScript and CSS2 support
  • multiple language support, including Arabic on older Macs (cannot display UTF-16 pages)
  • filtering: the Filter Manager allows for sophisticated filtering of images (e.g. ads), plugins, rendering and network settings, JavaScript, and cookies on a per-wildcard-URL basis for powerful contro;
  • kiosk mode: full screen display and access controls
  • download manager: allows the user start, stop, resume and review downloads and maintains a download history; it supports downloading a whole page or a site at once with flexible extension, file type, count and total size filters
  • portable web archives: ability to save pages as a ZIP archive containing HTML and images
  • Acid2 test compliance
  • a very configurable print dialog
  • a history window which can sort by title, last access date, or URL
  • a Hotlist (bookmark) mechanism which can automatically or manually check for updates to bookmarked sites
  • the ability to reload a single image on a page without needing to reload the whole page
  • the ability to disable web "annoyances" such as animated GIFs and embedded sound files
  • the ability to pretend to be another browser
  • support for sessions (i.e. saving and then loading all open windows and tabs)

iCab attracts criticism for:

  • worse performance than the Gecko- and WebCore-based browsers
  • instability, relative to its competitors (but the current final version seems to be more stable than the beta versions)
  • a perceived "Classic Mac OS look and feel"
  • insufficient compatibility with more intricate JavaScript-powered web sites

iCab is the only browser still being developed for legacy Macintoshes. The Mozilla website recommends it to Mac OS 9 users.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../i/c/a/ICab_78c9.html"