iCab

iCab

iCab 4.0 under Mac OS X 10.4.11
Developer(s) Alexander Clauss
Initial release February 17, 1999 (1999-02-17)
Stable release 5.7 (August 4, 2016 (2016-08-04)[1]) [±]
Preview release none (n/a) [±]
Operating system Mac OS X, iOS (active),
Classic Mac OS 7.5–9.2.2 (discontinued)
Available in English, German, French, Danish, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Chinese and Japanese
Type Web browser
Feed reader
License Shareware
Website icab.de

iCab is a web browser for Mac OS by Alexander Clauss, derived from Crystal Atari Browser (CAB) for Atari TOS compatible computers.[2] It was one of the few browsers still updated for the classic Mac OS prior to that version being discontinued after version 3.0.5 in 2008;[3] today Classilla is the only browser still maintained for that OS.[4]

The downloadable product is fully functional, but is nagware—periodically displaying a dialog box asking the user to register the product, and upgrade to the "Pro" version.[5]

Versions

iCab 2.9.9 supports both 68k and PowerPC Macintosh systems running System 7.5 through Mac OS 9.2.2. While no longer maintained, iCab 2.9.9 is still available for download and registration.

iCab 2.9.8 runs natively on early versions of Mac OS X, but OS X compatible versions of iCab 2.x are no longer officially available for download.

iCab 3.x can run on PowerPC systems running Mac OS 8.5 through Mac OS 9.2.2, or PowerPC or Intel systems running Mac OS X 10.1 or later. iCab 3 was last updated in January 2008.

iCab 4 was rewritten to use the Cocoa API and the WebKit rendering engine. It can run on PowerPC or Intel systems running Mac OS 10.3.9 or later.

iCab 5 was released on June 12, 2012. It runs on Mac OS 10.5 or later.

History

iCab's original rendering engine was often criticized for not supporting CSS and DOM. iCab 3 introduced improved rendering capabilities, including support for CSS2 and Unicode (via the ATSUI toolkit). iCab 4 switched to WebKit for its rendering engine, giving it the same rendering abilities as Apple's Safari browser.

On 7 June 2009, iCab 4.6, using the WebKit rendering engine, became the first desktop browser released to display a score of 100/100 and pass the Acid3 test. Apple's Safari 4 browser was released one day later and has been officially credited as being the first official release browser to pass the Acid3 test with a score of 100/100.

Features

iCab features a filter manager which allows users to avoid downloading advertisements and other content. Currently iCab comes with two filters (advertisements and video). Other kinds of filters add features, such as the YouTube video filter which adds a download link on all YouTube page views.

iCab has features for website developers, including an HTML validity checker, an automatic page refresh option, a Web Inspector, DOM Inspector, JavaScript debugger, and a Console. iCab's "Automatic Update" option, for any page it is rendering directly from the local hard disk, will automatically reload the page when changes are saved to disk. The HTML syntax validity checker displays a smiley face in the Status Bar and also, optionally, in the Toolbar. Clicking on the smiley will bring up a list of any errors on the page, as will "Error Report" from the Tools menu. Double clicking on an error will display the page source, with the offending syntax highlighted. The HTML syntax validator was first seen in the same author's earlier web browser, CAB.

iCab's Download manager allows the user to start, stop, resume and review downloads. It maintains a download history, and supports downloading of an individual page, or a whole site (crawling) with many user-selectable crawl-constraint options. It can save as portable web archives (a ZIP archive containing HTML, images and other files), or as individual files on the local hard drive.

iCab also contains the following features:[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Clauss, Alexander (2016-08-04). "iCab Download". iCab - Internet Browser. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  2. ↑ Patting, Sebastian (2011-11-22). "Interview with Alexander Clauss, iCab's Creator". Low End Mac. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  3. ↑ "iCab Download".
  4. ↑ Smykil, Jeff (2009-07-13). "Browse the Web in style with Classilla for Mac OS 9". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  5. ↑ "Purchase/Register iCab". 2016-08-03. Retrieved 2016-09-07.
  6. ↑ Gilberstone, Scott (2008-01-03). "iCab 4.0: A feature-packed reincarnation of the venerable mac browser". Wired. Retrieved 2016-09-07.

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